Faxing Berlin
by captain-tots
Summary: Ada Wong has surfaced in Berlin and the CIA sends Leon to capture her. His journey will lead him into a world of science and mystery, as well as force him to confront his past and choose between his free will or his country.
1. Nothing Personal

_She was the siren. Lips like cherries dipped in liquor. Her voice led him off the cliff._

Faxing Berlin

_A Resident Evil Novella_

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><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I'd like to thank you all for taking a look at my first story! The title "Faxing Berlin" was inspired by the song of the same name by Deadmau5. This story takes place between RE4 and RE5. Please note that this story was rated "M" for a reason and contains sexual content. Lots of thanks to my BFF Alias Blackclaw for inspiring me and talking me through the writing process, as well as the insanely talented author Zet Sway for proofreading.

~My favorite thing about fanfiction is that it's a great interactive experience between author and reader. To keep you all involved, I'll be including musical suggestions for each chapter. For this chapter, I'd recommend "Faxing Berlin" by Deadmau5.

~Capcom reserves all rights to Resident Evil and it's characters.

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><p><span>Chapter One.<span>

"_There are no good girls gone wrong - just bad girls found out." _

_**-**_**Mae West **

He was a repulsive little pustule to say the least. Even his name, Ulrich, sounded like it was overripe with something foul, ready to burst. On any normal day she would have found his playing hard-to-get both comical and sad. Today she was pissed. He had something she wanted—something she needed—it just wasn't what he thought. It had taken her five weeks to get to this point: two weeks to forge the paperwork, one week to get enrolled, and two weeks of cleavage and promises that she could score him some marijuana. All of that effort for this "private tutoring" session to occur. So, there she was. Long legs, shock of black hair, full red lips, and breasts straining the fabric of her sweatshirt, sitting next to him and breathing in his ear, biology books sprawled over the floor. A normal nerd would have jizzed himself by now. Maybe he was gay. She really hoped he wasn't gay, because while Ada Wong was capable of many things, penetrative anal sex was not one of them.

Ada leaned in and kissed him on the neck. She was a good actress, running a checklist in her mind of what to do and what to say.

"Ulrich... I think I really like you," she giggled. Coy college girl personality? Check. Ulrich sighed.

"Dawn, are you trying to use me?" he snipped. Ada thought that he sounded like a little yappy dog without it's balls when he was upset.

"Why would you say that Ulrich? How could you think I would do that to you?" she responded, with a tinge of shakiness to her voice. Emotional vulnerability? Check.

"Dawn, _meine mutter _told me before I left for college that I'm special and that people are going to try to use me for my intelligence... especially girls." Oedipal implications were not something Ada had factored in up until that point, but she was quick to improvise. Seduction was an asset of her's. Ulrich was just another teenage boy after all, and they all could be cracked rather easily.

"Ulrich... it's time to break free from your mother's grasp! You are your own man. I don't want to use you for your genius... I just want you for who you are!" It was time to lay down her cards. She kissed him on his slimy little lips. Ulrich went in with tongue and Ada suppressed her urge to gag. He was clearly a kissing virgin. Ada would have felt bad for him, if he wasn't a smelly little asshole. It didn't matter though. She'd bedded worse men in her time. Hell, it wasn't really even Ulrich's fault that he was so insufferable. He'd been taught by a whole slew of teachers and professors and even scientists that he was God's gift to the world of Biology. Ada came up from the suffocating kiss for air.

"When's your roommate coming back?" she gasped.  
>"I told him I was going to be busy tonight... all night actually." Well. Not gay then.<p>

"It would be a terrible thing to lie to him," she said with a smirk, before mentally reprimanding herself. No sarcasm. She was a shy, twenty year old biology major after all. She was to be as pure as driven snow. On that note, she briefly entertained the thought that he would notice that her body had a bit more...wear and tear than the average twenty year old virgin. Then again, his personality indicated that the last woman he saw naked was his mother. Ada dismissed the worry and pulled off her red Humboldt-Universität sweatshirt with a wide smile. She was genetically blessed with a seemingly eternally youthful body after all. Ulrich looked stunned. All she had left on was a pair of black leggings (no underwear), a sheer white tank top and a bright red bra, peeking over her neckline. Ada mentally prepared herself for the next step.

"Ooo, I'm so excited! Have you ever done this before? Where are your condoms?" Ulrich went pale. She supposed all his blood was draining southward.

"Just a minute!" he squeaked. Ada fought the urge to roll her eyes before silently praying to whichever deity controlled these sorts of things that he was not hairy.

Ulrich was a perfect storm of stereotypical nerd. He was short, bulky and acne stricken. He held his shoulder length brown hair in an unfortunate ponytail and was attempting to coax a beard out of his boyish face. Ada winced recalling the fact that he was not the most unattractive man she'd slept with for information. He struggled to pull his tight sweater off, releasing his gut from it's cruel, cable-knit constriction. His hands were shaking with nervousness. He next went for the fly of his pants.

"Do not laugh; do not laugh," Ada repeated as a silent mantra. Ada decided to save the big (or small) reveal for a few more seconds and slid off her black leggings. She sat cross legged on his bed, underneath a photographic print of two cancer cells dividing. A resin skeleton hung in the corner. Ulrich turned to face her, boxers around his ankles. He was completely shaven actually, in a haphazard fashion, but shaved none the less. She wondered why. Ada unsnapped the clasp of her bra and slid of the white tank top. Fully nude, she laid down on the bed.

"Okay... let's do this," he gasped, as if they'd already started. She hoped that he wasn't asthmatic. Poor kid. She felt almost bad for taking his innocence. Almost. He positioned himself on top of her and took in a huge breath. No foreplay, no kissing, just diving right in to her. She could respect that. She didn't want him to take his time.

"Tell me if it hurts, okay?" Perhaps he wasn't a total asshole.

"Okay!" Ada/Dawn replied with much more perkiness than the situation called for. He rolled on the condom and then plowed at her with no warning and a stunning ferocity.

"He must watch a hell of a lot of porn," Ada thought. It would explain the shaving after all. He wore himself out in a number of minutes. Clearly he wasn't used to hoisting himself up. It was a little embarrassing to watch, but she was glad that it ended quickly. It wasn't his face that bothered her so much as the irritating slapping noise his bulk made. Ada didn't particularly mind large men anymore than she minded the ugly ones, but she would have rather been on top. However, as a shy, twenty year old novice she had to avoid any displays of sexual competency. Ulrich disposed of the condom and crawled into the bed next to her.

"You're so pretty Dawn... that was so nice..." he mumbled.

"How cute," she thought. She supposed it was a nice as it could have been. In and out in five minutes flat, no kissing, no blubbering, "I love you!" when he hit climax. She tucked her head against the pillow and waited for him to fall asleep.

Ada waited ten minutes after he started snoring to get out of bed, vaulting herself over him. She fetched her external hard drive from her purse, switched on his laptop and keyed in his password. For a genius, you'd think his password hint wouldn't be "the scientific name of the Swine Flu." Any idiot with Google could figure that one out. She copied all of his documents on to her hard drive. The whole process only took a few minutes. Next she checked his email. He had selected the "remember my password" button. Ada couldn't believe her luck. She exported his inbox to the hard drive, before unplugging the device, turning off the computer, and putting the device back in her purse. She crawled back into bed with him and allowed herself to lightly fall asleep.

She called it "weaponized sexuality."

* * *

><p><strong>Two Months Later- Washington D.C. <strong>

Leon hated phone calls in the middle of the night. They were always a sign of trouble. It was the first few hours of a chilly Sunday in March and Leon was sleeping off one too many drinks from the night before. He reached for his phone, perched precariously on the edge of his nightstand. The screen read "Hunnigan."

Fuck. He answered it.

"Do you ever sleep Hunnigan? Go home, your family loves you."

"Very funny Leon. We just had a breakthrough in the Red case. We've gotten new information as to the whereabouts of Red. You need to come in, right now." Leon sighed. It sounded like he wasn't going to get to sleep off last night for another month or so.

"Should I pack a bag first?" he quipped.

"Just come in," Hunnigan replied. "We can discuss your involvement once you get here."

"I'll be there as soon as I can," Leon responded. He hung up and rolled out of bed.

Leon wouldn't have described himself as a priss by any means, but that didn't mean that he didn't care about his appearance. He stumbled off to his bathroom, a short walk across the floor of his tidy studio apartment, and got in the shower. Ten minutes of steam and some body wash that promised to make him smell like a mountain, a bit of hair gel, and a quick shave were in order.

Despite the fact that he had come into a good deal of money since joining the CIA and even more money after rescuing the President's daughter, he hadn't gotten used to spending money. Of course, his tiny home was about $2,000 a month in rent and that still seemed obscene to him. His apartment was fairly drab. He didn't do too much entertaining, and when he had a rare guest, all she tended to see was the ceiling. That's not to say that he brought girls home very often. He had a distaste for casual sex, but was no good with relationships because his job ran his life. His last serious tryst was with a single mother named Sarah who wanted nothing but sex and ended the relationship when her babysitter got mono. He didn't like living in one room either, but that was the only real choice in Washington real estate. His bed was curled in a corner alcove and the rest of his furniture was sparse: a lone sleeper sofa, a computer desk, a large gun safe and several book shelves. He supposed that if he had space, he wouldn't know what to do with it. His personal affects were few and far between. A picture of himself and his two sisters, one of his mother and father, and a beer stein he'd picked up in Spain. He used to keep potted plants, but they always died when he was away. He had an extensive collection of books. Most of them were nonfictional; he was currently reading the biography of J. Edgar Hoover. He kept a small assortment of novels: Les Miserables, Heart of Darkness and the occasional fluff read. He didn't read crime or current political novels. He thought there was enough of that in reality to go around.

He unlocked his gun safe to take out his Beretta and a magazine of bullets. He stored them in his attache case, not that he should need them today. He got dressed and slipped on his favorite leather jacket. His last thought before he left was,

"Damn, I need to stop buying cargo pants."

Leon took the subway to the Federal District. At this hour of the morning there was no one in the car but a few nonthreatening bums sleeping in the stiff seats. All the threatening ones were sleeping off last night's binge. Not that Leon wasn't prepared to take on a mugger. He'd handled a hell of a lot worse. He slid down in his seat and watched. That was a habit he could never break. Imagine everyone around you as a potential assailant. Every time he entered a room, he looked for three exits. He confused everyone at his nephew's wedding by standing near the window through the entire ceremony because the room was packed over the fire code. Bombs could strike anywhere after all, even a sleepy chapel in New Jersey. Maybe Tony Soprano was a guest?

When the train came to a screeching halt at his stop, Leon stepped off. The massive staircase to the outside world seemed almost insurmountable in the darkness. He yawned deeply and started walking.

* * *

><p>His office was in an undisclosed building not too far off from the White House. While the rest of the CIA took care of their business at headquarters a few miles away in McLean, Virginia, Leon and his peers were thought to be too valuable to keep in the same place. If a terrorist attack ever took out the CIA, it would be up him and his fellow agents to pursue it.<p>

Leon sat at a round table in a windowless room with a bulletproof door and two armed guards standing outside. They were merely for show, anyone in the room could have disabled an assailant. Leon noted that his two fellow operatives were still red eyed and hungover. He'd been with them less than four hours ago. In fact, at one in the morning, Agent Hayes had left the bar with a tall blonde floozy (who probably was hoping he was a married senator so she could get a reality TV show deal) and shouted,

"I'm getting laid tonight boys!" Leon wondered how his luck had fared. Seeing as it was 4 AM now, and Hayes looked absolutely _pissed_, Leon reasoned that his night did not go very well.  
>Hunnigan stepped into the room, clipboard in hand. She always looked painfully professional. Suit, ponytail, blank expression. Leon would have been lying if he said he'd never felt anything for her, but she was simply too mechanical to form anything but a business relationship with. They went out once, had a few drinks. She loosened up absolutely none. He tried to take her home, she refused. It was an embarrassing night for both of them, and they had since pretended it never happened.<p>

"Good morning agents. We are here today to discuss enemy operative Ada Wong, also known as Red. The director will be teleconferencing us shortly to inform you of our findings. Until then, I will give you the details as best as I can. Ms. Wong, as we know is an accomplice to the presumed, but unconfirmed, deceased Albert Wesker of the former Umbrella Corporation and potentially the Third Organization. Wesker was last seen alive by BSSA Agent Chris Redfield, before falling to his death at the Spencer Mansion. His body was never found. Operative Wong is most likely working for the Third Organization, which we have little to no information about. She is presumed to be sociopath, a nymphomaniac and severely narcissistic." Leon smiled. Ada was no nymphomaniac, he knew that for sure. As for the other charges placed against her, he could not say. When he was younger, it would have bothered him to have such differing opinions from the official CIA report. After Spain he began to value thinking for himself.

The flat screen mounted on the wall began to buzz. Hunnigan pressed a button on a small remote, and the screen came to life. It was the director of the CIA. The case must have been pretty special to warrant his attention.

"Good morning . I am calling to discuss with you the matter of enemy agent, alias Ada Wong. Ms. Wong is known to posses Bio-Organic weaponry, is an accomplice of the presumed dead Albert Wesker and is a severe threat to the safety of our United States and the world. One of our operatives in Berlin recently took these photos. A forensic photo analysis has shown that these photos are indeed of Ms. Wong. She is currently attending Humboldt-Universität in Berlin under the assumed identity of Dawn Ago, a twenty year old biology major."

The pictures on the screen showed a tall and lean young woman of Asian decent in a red sweatshirt and black jeans. She was holding hands with a trollish looking young man with a stocky build and pimply face. Leon almost laughed, but disguised it as a cough. That couldn't be Ada.

"The young man in these pictures is Ulrich Faber, an up and coming microbiologist currently obtaining his master's degree in Virology at Humboldt-Universität. He is eighteen. His general aptitude tests we have received from the university are off the charts. His professors hail him as being a genius. He is currently working with several pharmaceutical companies on a molecule which could denature the protein coating of a virus without harming the human who ingests it. We can see from his Facebook page that he is in a relationship with the aforementioned 'Dawn Ago,' which is a rather sloppy anagram if I do say so myself. We here at the intelligence agency highly doubt that Mrs. Wong is in a relationship with this rather homely young man out of affection or anything but a desire to use him for the Third Organization's purposes. We have tentatively assigned agent Leon Scott Kennedy to the case, as he has the best understanding of Ms. Wong. Agent Hayes and Agent Broom are to provide intelligence as necessary, along with civilian Ingrid Hunnigan. Agent Kennedy, you have fifteen hours to report to JFK. You will be taking a civilian flight to Berlin. Your objective is to temporarily disable Ms. Wong and bring her into custody. If possible, please avoid contact with Mr. Faber, as he is a German citizen and generally held in high regard. And God knows the German's tend to _overreact_ when they get angry. Over and out."

The screen flickered off.

Leon felt his hangover return, followed by a wave of anxiety. He would have been more than happy to never see her again.

* * *

><p>Back in his apartment, Leon pondered if he should call his mother and tell her he'd be out of touch for a while. She never really did understand why he wasn't supposed to call her on an assignment, why he couldn't tell her what his assignment was, and why he never came to see her anymore. He didn't feel like weathering the impending argument, not in his current state of mind anyway. His family was a topic he didn't even want to breach in his own thoughts today. Instead he would get ready to leave.<p>

He'd done this so many times that he had it down to a science. Throw out everything in the refrigerator; unplug the television; turn off the water valve to the bathroom; pack your suitcase. Two pairs of pants, four t-shirts, four pairs of boxers, one bulletproof vest. Laptop, Blackberry (the CIA wouldn't let their operatives use iPhones anymore after an agent missed a target walking into a gas station because he was playing Angry Birds), toothbrush and toothpaste, hairbrush, gel.

Up until this point, he had done a very good job of _not _thinking about Ada. He was going to be doing a lot of thinking about her for the next few weeks after all. No need to start now. No need to think about how she made his head ache and his heart flip and some other regions of him tingle. She reminded him of the Sirens of mythology: deadly, deceptively beautiful. Whatever that red faced scientist thought he had going for him was a carefully crafted skit.

The most frustratingly thing about her was that she kept coming to his aid. Without Ada, Leon would have been dead a thousand times over. And here he was, about to incapacitate her on orders from the government. It was all business though. She wouldn't have saved him had he not been useful to her in obtaining Las Plagas... right? Leon inhaled sharply.

They had a business relationship. That was all it was. A very complicated business relationship.

Nothing personal.

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><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>For the sake of my OCD, I would like to point out that "Angry Birds" was not released for the Blackberry until December of 2011, thus fitting into the timeline of this story. Additionally, I must note that I've never been to Berlin before, and my depiction of the city's geography will be terribly inaccurate. Forgive me.

~Reviews make Leon smile.


	2. Daddy Issues

Chapter Two. 

"_The CIA is made up of boys whose families sent them to Princeton, but wouldn't let them into the family business." _

_ - _**Lyndon B. Johnson **

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><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I actually wrote the bulk of this chapter before I wrote chapter one, because I was trying to invent a back story for Leon, and when I finished, I decided to wrap a whole novella around it. Anyway, I struggled a lot writing this chapter and ended up cutting quite a bit from it to keep things from getting too static. However, I'm pretty pleased with the end result, and I hope you all are too. Thanks a million to everyone who reviewed, subscribed and messaged me.

**Important:** You may have noticed that my pen name has changed. I typically go by "toripants" online, and due to my career and the graphic nature of this story, I thought it was inappropriate to make it so easy for a potential employer to Google search me and have this come up.

~Song for this chapter is: Until We Bleed by Kleerup ft. Lykke Li.

~Heidi's bicycle is dedicated to Alias Blackclaw.

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><p><strong>March 2006 (Present Day), Berlin, Germany<strong>

Leon tried his best to convince the bright faced cashier that all he wanted was a turkey sandwich and a cup of coffee. He could feel sleep creeping in at the corners of his eyes.

He wanted a _large_ cup of coffee to be specific; no cream, no sugar. She however seemed to disagree with his assessment. Leon's German had gotten rusty, but he could deduce from the expression on her face that she was saying,

"Are you sure you don't want a beer sir? You look like you could use it."

"Just coffee," Leon insisted sternly. She looked downcast. He pulled a few Euros from his pocket and told her to keep the change. Her expression perked up.

_ "Danke sehr!"_

Leon sat at a small table in the corner of the establishment. It could have been anywhere in the world had it not been for the fact that the menu was printed in German. Dim lights, plastic tables with peeling laminated tops dressed up to look like wood, and cold plastic chairs. The sandwich shop was a relic of the cold war, nestled awkwardly into a trendy neighborhood of Berlin.

If Ada really was hanging around with a university student, she was probably somewhere in the area.

"Ada, what the hell are you doing here?" he thought. "Why Berlin of all places?" The thing which disturbed him the most was the fact that she'd obviously wanted to be found, calling herself "Dawn Ago;" anyone could see through that. Did she want him to come find her? Leon shook his head. Too many questions, no answers. The girl at the counter called his name.

"_Herr Leonce,_ your food is ready!" Scott Leonce was a sloppy pseudonym, for a reason. If Ada wanted him to find her, he would make it easy on both of them. It was also easier to pretend he was French; there would be less trouble. Americans were generally thought of as instigators.

He fetched his coffee and sandwich from the deli counter and picked up an orphaned newspaper from an empty table. Perhaps it would help him with his German. He was more than competent with the language, but he didn't remember how to say "bitch in the red dress." Not that a newspaper could help him with that.

Leon sat down and caught the sight of himself floating on the surface of his coffee. He suppressed a tired smile. His stubble was going a little bit gray at the ends. He felt a bit ridiculous, barely thirty years old, and already graying. He could have shaved it all off if he wanted to, but he would have felt even more ridiculous with a baby face accented by a few wrinkles. His mother called them "worry lines" the last time he saw her. She had been right; he was always worried.

He was tired too. He hadn't been this tired in so long, such a long time that he was worried he was getting unfit for his job. That scared the shit out of him. He knew he was _damaged_, but he wasn't prepared to call himself _broken_.

Leon liked to think of himself as being immune to the common hangups of other men. He never felt the need to drink his friends under the table; he wasn't threatened by big muscle-bound guys at the gym heaving and huffing next to him; he could sit through _Love Actually_ or _The Notebook_ and not feel like less of a man for it. What he did fear was aging, if not for aesthetic reasons, then for job security.

Lately he was feeling old and tired, and landing in Berlin had only served to intensify his exhaustion. He felt the world blur in the corners of his vision. Words turned into clotted cotton balls in his mouth. When he closed his eyes, he almost felt as if they might not open again. This feeling was something stronger than jet lag, something stronger than stress, and it was disturbing him greatly. Maybe when he got into things—got his adrenaline going, got closer to his purpose—he would get out of his haze. As things were though, he hadn't been this tired since his return home from Spain.

_Spain._

Spain had defined his career, and pretty much the rest of his life. It was funny how things like that went. When he was younger, he always thought he would never get over Raccoon City. Raccoon City was just a faint memory these days. Spain was so vivid in his mind that he could still smell the blood, see it coagulating in his hands, watch it pour out of the villagers in ugly red streams. No one had ever told him what six pints really looked like.

The worst of Spain hadn't even been the mission it's self, but his return home.

The mission went by so quickly that he had no time to process what was going on. He The aftermath was sluggish and hazy, and had given him time to turn over in his mind everything that had happened a thousand times. His thoughts turned to the months he spent in purgatory after he delivered Ashley home.

* * *

><p><strong>2005- Minnesota <strong>

When he was finally released from government custody and given a six month sabbatical, Leon stayed with his mother for two weeks. He no longer had an apartment of his own and she was always begging him to call her after all. She was getting older too and he felt bad for having spent most of his adult life out of contact with his family. He wasn't allowed to call them while he was on assignments for security reasons. Now that he was off duty for an extended period of time, Leon thought that going back to his childhood home would be good for him.

Exhausted and sick, he had planned on spending his time alternately sleeping and eating mashed potatoes or something for the first week or so. He had lost forty pounds that he was unaware he was capable of losing and was afflicted by something that the CIA's doctors referred to as "Occupational Burnout." The operatives themselves were more likely to refer to it as "Post Traumatic Fucking Stress Disorder."

His mother had no such plans of letting him rest though.

Leon had somehow forgotten that his mother was a terribly nosy woman. She picked and argued and pried until she knew exactly what she wanted. Never mind that Leon's work was top-secret-classified government information. She was his mother, and in her own mind, her authority over him trumped that of the government and possibly even God.

She was angry that he wouldn't tell her what had happened to him. She was angry because he was withdrawn and depressed and didn't want to be shopped around to her blue-haired lady friends granddaughter's as a possible husband. All he wanted to do was sleep. Leon was too tired and sick to find a new apartment and staying with his mother was making him sicker. His escape came in the form of his oldest sister, Regina.

Regina had been born to an unnamed high school senior when his mother was a mere seventeen years old. Melanie came along right on time, when their mother was thirty, freshly married and newly wealthy. Melanie was a labor and delivery doctor now, a prestigious position that his mother loved to harp about. Leon was a rather late addition to the family, after the improper assumption was made that his mother was no longer fertile at forty one.

Regina was a little over fifty, a good twenty years older than Leon. The two had almost no physical similarity; Regina was short and slightly heavy with curly black hair. She had been a hospice nurse for close to thirty years and her knees were completely blown.

Regina was tired. She had three ungrateful children, all boys. The eldest was a narcissist in law school, the middle child as well as the most tolerable one was a real estate agent with a baby on the way, and the youngest was a drugged up college student in his junior year of studying "interdisciplinary arts." Her husband has recently filed for divorce.

Even though she and Leon had never lived together, he felt the strongest family connection with her. Regina knew what it was like to walk among zombies.

Regina needed a double knee replacement, too many years of carting zombies around. She wasn't going to be able to walk for the next few weeks. Leon eagerly volunteered himself to come stay with her while she recovered.

He found Regina to be a very amicable companion. She didn't say a whole lot or want to talk about what had happened to him. She was entirely content to leave him alone, which was all he really needed. He slept in the bedroom that used to belong to one of his nephew's.

The first week he was stayed there he dreamed about Spain every night. Luis spoke to him from the underworld while Ada laughed at him for his weakness. He saw the villagers and the normal families he used to be. He felt their blood pool in his hands and run through his fingers, leaving a residue he'd never be able to wash off.

Every night that week he woke up screaming. His sister started leaving a glass of water and a single Vicodin next to his bed. The dreams stopped. He felt bad for taking her prescription from her, but she insisted the doctor had given her too much anyway.

After two months of living with his sister, she was deemed well enough to walk without a wheelchair. She took a job as a nurse at a nearby middle school. Leon rented a small apartment in the affluent Dupont Circle area of Washington D.C. and prepared to go back to work.

Three weeks after Leon moved into his new apartment, his mother called him at 2 AM in hysterics. Regina had taken all of her remaining Vicodin at once. She sustained severe brain damage.

The middle son moved her out to New Jersey with him and his wife. Her estranged husband moved into her old house.

A few months later, Leon pulled some strings and the husband was arrested for tax-evasion.

He didn't see his family much after that.

Leon didn't like even thinking about his family. Maybe things between himself and his mom and sisters would have been different if he had become a doctor like his mother wanted him to be. When his father was killed in a mugging, all that changed...

* * *

><p>He could have sat and stared into his cup all day had the girl at the counter not come and sat down at the table next to him.<p>

"So, are you trying to read your future like a gypsy?" she asked. Leon choked on his own breath, shocked out of his introspection.

"Excuse me?"

"You've been sitting over here with your face just about submerged in your coffee for half an hour... do you see it yet?" He assumed the girl was just teasing him until she went on. "You'll never get anywhere trying to read foam from that nondairy creamer. It's too temperamental."

"Excuse me?"

"Do you speak German? Or can you only say 'excuse me?' You didn't order an 'excuse me.' "

"I thought I did up until now," he laughed. Leon liked to privately consider himself a master of humor and wit in all languages.

"Thought you did what? Ordered an 'excuse me'?" Perhaps he was not.

"I speak German. I'm sorry for confusing you, young lady." The girl gave him a wide smile. It seemed like that was the only expression her face could form. She had yellow-blonde hair in braided pigtails that matched her sunny disposition and bright blue eyes like twin ponds. Very German. She wore a plain blue t-shirt and khakis under a gray apron.

"In that case, let me show you something." She pulled a deck of large cards bound with a hair tie from the pockets of her apron. "This is how you can _really_ tell the future." She flipped them over in her hands a few times. Leon noted the peculiar designs on the front of the deck. They were Tarot cards. "Well, I can't show you right now, because I'm on the clock... but we're closing in half an hour."

Leon hadn't noticed the time until now. He should have checked into the hotel already, but jet lag had left his mind and body all kinds of confused and craving turkey sandwiches at nine in the evening.

"Do you carry those with you everywhere?" he questioned. She chuckled.

"I keep them in my purse. When I saw you looking into your mug I got them out to show you. Anyway, some of my friends and I are doing a reading sort of thing tonight... would you like to come?" Leon had no interest in following a chipper young fortune-teller around Berlin. He would have much rather gone to his hotel room and read his book. He'd just gotten to the part about J. Edgar Hoover dressing up in a tutu.

"It's not like at someone's creepy apartment, it's at Humboldt, you know, the university. We have a club there... well, we reserve a room," she continued.

"Liberal arts kids. They've got a club for everything," Leon thought. Despite his objection to anything occult—not based on his morals, but prior experience with occultists—Leon knew that Ada and her recruit went to Humboldt. He sincerely doubted that any up and coming microbiologist would spend his time reading tea leaves and playing "Light as a Feather, Stiff as a Board", but the university campus was expansive, and he could probably use the girl to give him some sort of directions as to the location of the biology department.

"So, do you go to school at Humboldt?" he asked her.

"Yes I do! I'm majoring in microbiology. Well, I will be. I entered as a studio art major, but... things have changed lately. I'm declaring my new major in the fall." Leon was stunned by his luck. Maybe this girl knew where Ada was.

"What made you decide to change your major?"

"I just met some people and well... they changed my life. I see everything so clearly now!" Everything she said was punctuated with a beaming smile at the end of her sentences. Leon had never seen someone look so happy to have gotten involved with what were undoubtedly some potheads who thought they could see the future.

Maybe the cards _really_ told her to major in Microbiology. Doubtful.

Maybe she was trying to sleep with that little troll Ulrich too.

Maybe he was good in bed.

Leon shuddered at the thought before recomposing himself.

"So, before I go running off with you young lady, what's your name?"

"Heidi!" How Germanic. He saw that one coming. He wouldn't have been surprised if her she said last name was _Farfegnugen_.

Leon rolled over his options in his head. It was late, he was tired, and the girl was spouting nonsense. However, he had been trained to take advantage of any situation which brought about the possibility of contacting the target.

"Well then Heidi, I would be much obliged if you took me to this meeting with your friends."

"_Mit Vergnügen!_" she replied, "with pleasure."

* * *

><p>Ada was getting tired of college. She would enjoy it much more if she wasn't underneath Ulrich (literally and figuratively) but he had proven himself to be extremely useful for her purposes, no matter how insufferable he was. She'd quickly learned that he had a God complex—how familiar—and was obsessed with attempting to control the people around him.<p>

It was ironic; his desire to manipulate others allowed Ada to control him.

The second thing she'd learned about Ulrich was that he was obsessed with the occult. Perfect. He and some of his buddies liked to play around with Tarot Cards and read tea leaves and such. There were three of these friends. They acted like him, smelled like him, talked like him. _Disgusting. _

One of them even had a little girlfriend named Simone that he'd met through a mutual interest in all that magical bullshit. Ada was surprised that supposed men of scientist would be so interested in something unfounded, but upon closer inspection, it made sense.

Growing up with no friends, no social skills, being told you're special, thinking you're better than the people around you, but there's no way to prove it. Dabbling in "magick" was their way of trying to tip the scales, trying to reap the rewards of their talents before they had even done anything to deserve it. They couldn't change the past, so they turned to trying to influence the future.

It didn't matter if it worked. All that mattered that was that they thought it worked. And as long as they thought it worked, Ada could exploit them.

She was the mistress of manipulation.

Ada had happened upon Ulrich by chance. The Organization had given her an assignment and no resources. Typical. She didn't even dare complain; it wasn't like she would get any sympathy.

Umbrella had crashed, money was tight and laboratories were expensive. All their remaining money was being poured into some sort of cryogenic project to preserve a dead wench the whole organization was obsessed with. Their viral agents had been resigned to a glorified mini-fridge with a few padlocks on it. Of course, they wanted to have their infected cake and eat it too. Thus, Ada had been given the gargantuan task of finding a way to engineer a new virus.

They told her she would find a way, she always did after all. That's why she had lived so long.

One of the lower rung members of The Organization was a weapon's dealer interested in selling B.O.W.'s. He was an old German man who acted like he had deeper pockets than he really did. Kept a few girls around in addition to his wife, drove a fancy car, the works. He had taken a fancy to Ada over the years and dropped her a hint. His daughter was getting her teaching certificate in Chemistry at Humboldt University.

The daughter said there was some guy in one of her classes who was of interest. Eighteen years old, possibly on the autism spectrum, a savant by all reports. Nasty little son of a bitch, but he was on the forefront of microbiology, specifically virology. He had the run of the biology labs too. He was there day and night, and eventually they just gave him the key.

He was young, he was impressionable, he was vulnerable, and he was smart.

They told Ada to give it a shot. She never liked taking orders, but too much was on the line.

* * *

><p><strong>February 2006- Berlin, Germany <strong>

Heidi had started college full of optimism. She was going to become a great artist; she could feel it. Maybe she would melt a bike into the side of a building, or crochet a tea cozy around a tank. The world was her artistic oyster.

There was only one problem: Heidi didn't have any original ideas. She was fantastic at imitation, but had no vision. Her failures left her exhausted and four weeks into the second semester she had found herself unable to fight off a depression that followed her everywhere like a stagnant cloud.

Heidi got a job at a small sandwich shop near campus; she needed the money to buy art supplies. A group of quiet students came in almost every night to sit in the corner and play card games. There were six of them: four pockmarked boys, a slight brown haired girl with an excessive number of scarves, and an Asian girl who always wore red.

One night after Heidi had just bore the brunt of a particularly harsh critique—it was about the bicycle idea—she was fighting back tears as the group of came in. The brown-haired girl was halfway through ordering when Heidi broke down into a torrent of tears and snot.

"I'm so sorry... I'm not usually like this..." she gasped through the bout of involuntary shakes.

"What's wrong?" the girl in red asked.

"I just think that I've made so many mistakes... I'm on the wrong path... Something needs to change."

The brown-haired girl smiled sympathetically.

"Oh honey, if you want to talk about paths..well, why don't I just show you."

A week after this meeting, Heidi submitted the paperwork to change her major to Microbiology and bought a deck of tarot cards.

* * *

><p>Leon waited for Heidi to finish scrubbing down the tables. She was in complete contrast to her dingy surroundings: she sang pop songs and danced about the room while she worked like it was all fun to her.<p>

_Ignorance is bliss._

It was about 10:30 now. Heidi said the meeting started in an hour. Typical teenage witches, always doing things at midnight. Leon was growing bored of staring out the window, so he decided to ask Heidi some more questions. Maybe he could get something out of her about Ada.

"So Heidi, why do you want me to come along with you?" She wrung a rag out into a bucket of soapy water before responding.

"You just look like you're searching for something. Maybe we can help you find it."

"What do you think I'm searching for, Heidi?"

"I don't know. You tell me. You probably don't even know. That's why we ask the cards." She stared at him with such an intensity in her blue eyes that he had to momentarily look down at the table.

"What a strange girl," he thought.

Leon still wondered why she so badly wanted him to come with her. He knew good and well whom he was searching for and didn't believe she was really able to sense his inner turmoil. It was vain of him, but he considered that she found him attractive.

"Daddy issues," he concluded.

* * *

><p><strong>February, 2006- Humboldt University Biology Department<strong>

Ada sat with her legs crossed on top of the table in the lab, doing a sudoku puzzle with red rimmed reading glasses perched on the edge of her nose. Ulrich was peering at an agar plate through a microscope.

"What are they doing, baby?" Ada asked sweetly. Urlich spoke without looking up.

"They're multiplying, Dawn."

She smiled.

"Perfect... baby, that's just perfect." Ada put down the puzzle and lowered herself from the table before kissing him on the neck. "You're going to be a God someday, you know that, Ulrich?" she breathed in his ear. Ulrich laughed.

"Come on Dawn, we don't even know how the virus will take in rats, much less humans. All we know is that it's growing. Being a God though... I could get used to that."

"You and me, and Peter and Lucas, and Max and Simone... we can all be Gods." Ulrich stiffened. He turned away from the microscope and snorted,

"I will be the most powerful though. After all, I am the one who did all the work! Certainly Dawn, you have been _absolutely indispensable_ in this research... but I deserve the highest dose!" Ada fought the urge to roll her eyes. He was an arrogant little SOB. Without her, he wouldn't even know what Progenitor was, much less have been able to get his grubby little hands on it to fiddle around with. She did need a very concentrated dosage of the new virus however, so it was best to play along.

"But of course darling. Consider us to be your demi gods_, _if you will."

Ulrich smiled. He was a glutton for affirmation.

Ada's phone buzzed lightly. She went to check her messages. "So, how long do you think it will take for us to wrap things up? Simone and Max are already at the cafe'. They haven't ordered yet though. Simone said the little clerk girl is in the bathroom crying her eyes out." Ulrich turned off the microscope.

"We can go in a few minutes. First though, don't you think my success deserves a reward Dawn?" Ada inwardly cringed. She was sick and tired of giving him sex for every little good thing he did. He treated orgasms like dog treats.

"In the lab? What if we contaminate something?"

"Come on. It will be sexy." She tried very hard to not laugh. Ulrich knew nothing about _sexy._ Her laugh came out as a sneeze.

"_Gesundheit!_" Ulrich said. "Now then, come on. It won't take me too long."

Yes, the things Ulrich didn't know about what was sexy could fill a book. It was a testament to Ada's professionalism that she didn't say all the things she was thinking, like,

"Damn Ulrich, you really know how to get a girl wet," or "You do realize that the female orgasm is not a unicorn?" or, "For all your classes in anatomy, you still don't know where the clitoris is?"

She hated fucking Ulrich. It made her feel cheap. It made her feel used.

"_It's just business."_

_ **"So we're a whore now?" **_

_ "This is the only way."_

_ **"That's doubtful." **_

He unzipped his fly. Pulled down his pants. He was hard. He opened her purse and scrambled for a condom. She hated it when he looked through her purse.

_**"You're going to let him in us?" **_

_"Fuck off." _

_ **"Fuck? Yeah, that's what we're about to do, isn't it?" **_

He pushed her on to the lab table. It was cold and hard and had no sympathy for her.

"Come on Dawn, don't be a bitch about it. Take your pants off." Her reading glasses fell off the table and shattered. She grimaced in anger.

_**"Are you going to let him talk to us like that?"**_

_** "**He'll pay for it... just before he's dead." _

She took her pants off. He was in her before she had the time to kick her discarded clothes off the table.

As he came, Ada pictured him with his hands tied behind his back, his throat slit, blood gushing out of his body as he gasped desperately for air.

It was the most enjoyable sex she had ever had with him.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>And so the plot thickens! I would like to point out to the readers that the suggestion that Ulrich may be on the Autism spectrum is not an attempt at justifying his rather awful behavior. It's more so an explanation of why he doesn't react to criticism of his behavior, which will come into play later.

I went for a sort of "weaving" feel with this chapter to establish what is going on and why it's happening without a huge, sudden reveal. Let me know how I did; the review button is right down there.


	3. Unlucky Man

Chapter Three.

_Last night I stayed up late playing poker with Tarot cards. I got a full house and four people died._

**-Steven Wright **

* * *

><p><strong>Important: <strong>I removed this chapter and reuploaded it, due to issues with the site. I'm sorry if you got an email alert twice!

**Author's Note: **Yay, this chapter is finally done! I probably rewrote it about five times until I was satisfied with it. Anyway, I have a few notes to make before you start reading. Firstly, the occult plays a pretty big role in this chapter. I am not familiar with Neopaganism, but I did my best to research it as well as I could before writing the portions of this chapter which feature it. I do understand however that Neopaganism is a very personal religion that's open to many different interpretations, so if I got anything grievously wrong, just take it as an interpretation. Secondly, I'd like to point out that there's a certain element of exaggeration when it comes to my original characters. I cover up my novice-ness with humor, so please bear with me when I create wild stereotypes of nerds, Germans, occultists and any other group I might happen to brush upon. Thirdly (I'm almost done), this chapter does a lot of setting up for the action which is to come later, so stick with me here! I'd love to just jump straight into the LeonxAda goodness, but I'm trying to pace myself.

~A billion thanks to my wonderful reader, **xXChantoXx**, who lives in Berlin and helped me with all sorts of details, most of which will appear later...

~Wrote this chapter to "Levels" by Avicci

* * *

><p>Leon did not like touching people he didn't know. He had been told that hypochondria was a symptom of his Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. He said it was a symptom of being a normal person who'd been nearly sodomized by a giant crab-monster.<p>

Regardless of _why_ he didn't like it, Leon now found himself sitting cross legged on the floor of a small classroom, holding hands with Heidi on one side and with a strange and hairy young man on his left. At least he knew that Heidi had just been elbow deep in soapy water.

"Breathe in. Breathe out. Let your spirit go," instructed the small young woman sitting directly across the circle from him. She seemed to be the closest thing to a leader the group had and clearly fancied herself to be something of a gypsy. She was garbed in a hugely oversized paisley print dress with a strategically drooping neckline, revealing tattoos of alphabetic symbols on each side of her collarbone. Her hair formed brown, frizzy mountains around her head, which she tried to keep back from her face by tying a scarf around her forehead.

Leon enjoyed meditation when he was at home in his securely locked apartment with no one else around. Today, there was no chance of him _letting his spirit go_. God only knew where it might end up; with a rag covered in chloroform under his nose, in the basement of a dormitory.

He stared intently at the young man on his left. Leon ran through countless possibilities of how dirty the man's hands could be.

He probably hadn't washed his hands all day.

He probably had masturbated right before he had gone to the meeting.

He probably had been sticking his fingers in a jar of Nutella and licking it off.

There were three males in the circle, not counting Leon. The one Leon was gingerly holding the hand of looked like he had just rolled out of a cave for the spring; he was bulky and had thick, dark hair. The one to Heidi's right had blonde hair in a long ponytail and a strange beard that would have been more at home on a Pharaoh than a twenty something undergrad. His t-shirt was too small and strained to cover his torso. The last young man was sitting next to the gypsy looking girl. He was so pronouncedly thin and pale that it seemed light would just pass right through him. His hair was light blonde and fairly had seen him and the girl come in together, which explained why he kept himself presentable.

Heidi had mentioned that everyone but the gypsy, whose name was Simone, was a microbiology major.

"Breathe in. Breathe out. I want you to picture yourself in the weakest state you've ever been," Simone said.

* * *

><p><strong>2005-Washington DC<strong>

"What the fuck do you mean mom? You mean she's dead? My sister is fucking dead?"

"Leon Scott Kennedy, you do not use those words with your mother."

"Would you just tell me if she's dead or not, mom?"

"She's not dead Leon. She's just... gone." Leon hung up the phone.

There were a million things that he _should _have done. He should have gotten on the first flight to Minnesota and comforted his mother and his sister and his nephews. He should have never left his older sister in that big empty house all alone.

He should have at least called his mother back.

Leon was supposed to be the "man" of the family after all, and here he was hiding in the city and leaving his mom and sister to deal with the doctors and lawyers and social workers by themselves.

Instead of doing any of the things he should have, he stumbled over to the kitchen, nearly tripping on the bottoms of his ratty pajama pants, and crumbled up a package of ramen noodles. Leon didn't have the energy to be a hero anymore.

He laid on his couch while he waited for the soup to cook and watched his chest rise and fall, as if every breath was a massive undertaking, before hacking up some blood streaked phlegm. He could see his own ribs tight against his skin. The effect was both gross and morbidly amusing.

The microwave beeped and Leon got off the couch with some effort. He was so sick of being sick. It was pneumonia now. The CIA's doctor's speculated he had a compromised immune system from Las Plagas. The quick succession of opportunistic illnesses had completely ravaged his body. He needed a few courses of steroids in order to not contract every single sickness he was exposed to. Ashley was sick too. Of course, Ashley was sick in Saint Jude's Hospital, while he was sweating out his fever on his couch at home.

It was two in the morning, he was coughing up blood, and a few hundred miles away his sister had just tried to kill herself with a fair amount of success.

A few months later, he had helped his sister Melanie clean out Regina's old house.

"You know Leon, you really make me sick sometimes. You can give up your whole life for the President's family, but when we need you, you're nowhere to be found," she said.

Leon didn't bother to try and deny it.

* * *

><p>"Exhale. I want you to picture yourself shedding the skin of your old weak self. See yourself becoming enlightened. We are to become reborn and out of the weakness that has plagued us, we shall grow strong." Leon raised an eyebrow. It was all just self-help jargon, right?<p>

"Maybe I am paranoid," he thought. He'd dealt with too many psychopaths to _not_ get nervous when people started throwing words like "rebirth" and "plague."

Simone lead them in a few more breathing cycles before ending. Leon was glad when it was over, his backpack dug into his shoulders every time he took a deep breath.

"Ah, what a renewing experience!" she exclaimed. "I see we have a guest with us tonight. We shall fellowship together with greetings. What is your name, guest?" Leon cleared his throat.

"Scott. Scott Leonce. It's a pleasure to meet you."

"My name is Simone. I eagerly anticipate our spiritual journey together, Scott." And he had thought Heidi was weird. Simone gestured to the skinny blonde boy next to her. "This is my life partner, Max." Max waved sheepishly. He didn't look like much of a talker.

The other two were introduced as Luke and Peter, the blonde and the brunette. Neither of them seemed to be terribly talkative. Leon wondered what sort of interest they could possibly have in neopaganism. Simone was really the star of the show, speaking in esoterica and waving her skinny bangle covered arms around. Her fingers had more symbols like the ones on her chest drawn on them. She groped through the pockets of her dress and turned around to present Leon with a deck of large cards.

"Scott, I sense a negative energy in your soul."  
>"Is that so?" he replied, with a little more bite than he intended.<p>

"Defensive I see." She handed him the deck. "Heidi sent me a text before you came. She said she met a stranger with a weight on his soul which he could not articulate," Simone paused for a moment. "Shuffle. I'm going to read your cards in the Celtic Cross pattern." Leon did as she asked and handed them back to her.

No one had mentioned anything about a guy named Urlich or a girl named Dawn. Leon was disappointed in himself for wasting this time.

"Have you ever done this before?" Simone asked.

"I can't say I have."

"Well, let me give you sort of a crash course... what the cards are going to tell us about is _Wyrd_, which is sort of like fate. It's the culmination of everything you've done so far in life and how that's going to play into your future. So, it's not like we look into a crystal ball and see what's going to exactly happen. It's more like we clarify your past and what can come from that... does that make sense?"

Leon nodded.

"Oh, and make sure you clear your mind. Now shuffle."

Simone dealt the cards ferociously, slamming them down into the floor as if they were being punished. She spoke with a sort of informative urgency to her voice.

_Your present is indicated by the Five of Pentacles. It seems that there has been some sort of rejection or loneliness in your life. _

_ Your immediate challenge in life is the Page of Swords in reverse. There's a cunning or untrustworthy person who is causing you issues. _

_ Your distant past is represented by the Five of Cups. You've experienced the lost of a love one sometime ago that weighs heavily on you. _

_ Your recent past is represented by the reversed Sun. You have had general unhappiness in your life. _

_ Your best possible outcome in this predicament which faces you is The Star. The best thing that could happen to to you will bring new hope and fulfillment... perhaps a chance to start over? _

_ The near future hold the Knight Of Cups in reverse. This card represents someone who may be seductive or sensual, but untruthful. _

_ The other factors in your life are represented by the Seven of Wands. This means you will face a brutal conflict soon. _

_ These situations in your life are under the influence of the King of Sword reversed. This is an evil and ruthless person who judges harshly and is conspiring against you. _

_ Your hopes and fears are represented by the Four of Wands. This means you wish for a happy ending more or less; that's understandable" _

She took a deep breath before placing down the last card, as if her energy was drained. "And your final outcome... **The Lovers**, reversed."

Simone stared straight into his eyes. "You are a very unlucky man, Mr. Scott Leonce."

As if he was waiting on that cue, a certain Ulrich Faber walked into the room. Leon immediately felt his face flush red with shock.

"Oh, did I scare you?" Simone asked. "Don't worry, the cards are temperamental... your reading is so poor that I think your mood might be influencing it. You weren't listening to me when I said to clear your mind, were you?" she scolded.

Leon didn't hear a word of it. He was fixated on the young man in the doorway. What Leon could make out in the dark looked just like the pictures he'd been briefed with.

Short guy, stout, clothes too tight for comfort, beard, ponytail... of course, he looked pretty similar to the other guys in the room. There was just an air about him. He stood a little too tall, slammed the door open with a little too much force, walked with too much pride in his step. He thought he was somebody.

"Scott? Do you hear me?" Simone started crying. "Heidi, I think I got your friend possessed! Okay... everyone, just stay calm... does anyone have a cross?" Ulrich plopped down next to her on the floor and laughed. His backpack clinked when he set it down.

"Simone, what the hell are you doing?"

"Oh God, Ulrich, I didn't even see you come in." There it was, that name.

"I'm fine, sorry. I was just thinking," Leon said, when he caught his breath. So much for being an unlucky man. He landed in Berlin less than a day ago and he already had the target's accomplice sitting next to him. Simone pointed over to Leon.

"This is Heidi's friend, Scott. He's got a lot on his mind. I was just doing a reading for him. So, where's Dawn tonight?" Ulrich grinned in response.

"She's still sore."

Simone scowled.

"You're disgusting!" she snapped.

"I'm kidding Simone. She's running a test in the lab tonight. Seriously though... if you could get that whenever you wanted, wouldn't you take advantage of it?"

Heidi spoke up this time.

"You're lucky you're smart Ulrich, or I bet she wouldn't touch you with a fifty-foot pole." Ulrich raised two meaty hands up as if he was blocking their verbal assaults.

"Where is all this animosity coming from, ladies? Come on, be nice or I won't share." Ulrich pulled two bottles of whiskey, some clear soda, and a package of plastic cups from his bag.

"Will you let me finish the reading before we get smashed?" Simone snapped. Leon sensed a power struggle. Ulrich shrugged.

"Here, I'll help you." Ulrich leaned close into him. Leon smelled whiskey on his breath.

"Nice kid," Leon thought.

"Well, this one means you're doomed, and that one means you've got some bitch out for you, oh and that last one means your girlfriend probably has a penis or something."

Simone growled.

"Cut this shit out Ulrich!"

Ulrich hiccuped in response.

"God, are you already wasted?" she continued.

Ulrich came right back with an insult.

"Well excuse me, Literature Major. You spend all day smoking weed and analyzing poems. I'm the one who's going to make us all super fucking heroes. Give me some respect here!"

Simone's boyfriend Max—who had been sitting silent until this point—dove for the first bottle.

"So, who wants a drink?"

* * *

><p>Heidi was drunk out of her mind so quickly that when she threw up on Leon's lap, he wondered if she had food poisoning.<p>

He had decided to stay and watch the spectacle in the hopes that Ada would show up. Not that he would have known what to do if she had suddenly walked in. Hell, if she saw him, she'd probably jump on a plane to Brazil. But, he wasn't sure what else he could do but wait for her.

He had so many questions, and still no answers.

Why was Ada here?

What did the scumbag scientist have to do with her?

What the hell had he meant when he said he was going to make them super heroes?

"Scott, help me up..." Heidi cried. Leon shook his head.

_College. _

"Time for you to go home."

"Okay... but only if you'll take me." The last thing he wanted to get roped into doing was walking an intoxicated teenage girl home. But, Leon was a gentleman, and it wouldn't be right to leave her to her own devices. Especially not when two of the boys were eying her like a piece of meat.

"Where do you live?"

"With Simone and Max..." she turned to the couple, who were huddled together in a corner. "Are you guys going home now?" Simone laughed. She seemed marginally more sober than Heidi.

"Of course not, I do my most accurate divination when I'm drunk," she said. Leon rolled his eyes. The only thing she was divining was her hands down her boyfriend's pants.

"Okay... I'll see you guys later," Heidi slurred. Leon stood up and slung his backpack over his shoulders. Heidi wobbled into a standing position.

* * *

><p><strong>Wannsee, Berlin<strong>

Dawn Ago might have been in the lab tonight, but Ada Wong was not. Ada Wong was about fifteen miles away in Wannsee, an affluent lake side district of the city surrounded by a dense forested area. The lake was beautiful and would have attracted all sorts of people to it's waters, had it not been unseasonably cold.

Ada was not there to go swimming however. She was holed up in the second—or was it third—home of the German weapon's dealer. His mistress was in the hospital again. Ada hoped that she wouldn't get out anytime soon, because she enjoyed having the whole house to herself. Sharing her possessions with other women had never been her style.

Ada was curled up quite comfortably in the large bed when her phone rang. The number was unlisted. She sighed. It was like him, to call her at such unreasonable hours of the night.

"Good evening, sir," she purred into the receiver.

"Hello, Ada. I'm calling to inform you that I will be making a stop by soon. I've come to check on the status of your research. Bring that boy with you."

"You're visiting me? Why, what have I done to deserve such an honor?"

"I have news for you. It's best we discuss it in person." Down to business as always.

"If you insist,_ Wesker,_" she said his name like it was an amorous curse.

" I will come to the house in Wannsee on Sunday morning," he paused. "I look forward to your company, Ada." His voice betrayed the slightest hint of lust. Wesker wasn't usually one to admit to vices.

"As I do to yours," Ada replied. She reveled in her own.

She hung up the phone and smiled. Getting the research printed out for Wesker would be incredibly easy. Ever since the night she broke into Ulrich's computer, she had been able to remotely download everything he saved to the laptop, as well as discover his prior research, his personal interests and all sorts of things which had aided her. For someone who was supposedly so smart, Ulrich was lousy at computer security.

She wondered what Wesker wanted him there for. If he was just taking their lab results, it wouldn't make sense for him to show up in front of Ulrich and blow her cover. The operation must have been coming to a close. Which didn't make sense. The virus wasn't fully operational yet.

She furrowed her brow. Ada didn't like what was going on. While she was a spy for hire, she had morals too, no matter how far down she was used to burying them. What Wesker had gotten her involved with was morally reprehensible, to say the very least.

She was stuck. It wasn't like she could just tell him that she wouldn't work for him anymore and run off to Interpol. He would have her killed, and a dead Ada Wong was completely useless to anyone's interests.

She had tried in her own way to get some sort of outside help involved: going by a pathetically obvious alias, walking around areas of high surveillance, making a Goddamn Facebook page, and still there was nothing. If any agency was actually tracking her, they were doing such a damn good job of it that she had yet to notice. And that was impossible. Nothing escaped Ada.

Ada felt conflicted, an emotion she wasn't used to. She was fine with collecting samples and gathering intelligence, but what she had gotten herself embroiled in was a fucking _doomsday_ project. If someone didn't notice her obvious pleas soon, Wesker's plan would go off without a hitch, and her neat little place in the end of the world would be duly noted. Maybe her name would be in a book some day.

"Somebody better hurry up and find me," she muttered.

She shook her head. The important thing to think about was the immediate challenge, and that was getting Ulrich to come to the house. Ada had told Ulrich that she was living with her wealthy aunt and uncle right now, and they were extremely religious and would not approve of her bringing a boy home. He had protested at first, but he eventually grew used to the routine of walking her to the train station every night and sending her off to what he assumed was her cozy home. They'd only really spoken about the arrangement once.

* * *

><p><strong>Two Months Ago- Berlin, Germany <strong>

"So what's your uncle's name?" he asked. Ada cleared her throat. She should have thought of this earlier.

"Albert... I call him uncle Al thought. They're on my mom's side of the family." She inwardly laughed at the thought of ever calling Wesker "Uncle Al." He would have a conniption.

"And your aunt?"

"Wilhelmina... Aunty Wilhelmina." Why the hell not. The two of them might as well have been married back during the pre-outbreak days.

"That's a funny name," he replied.

"Yes, _Ulrich_**, **it sure is."

"Well excuse me, my name means 'noble ruler of the wolves;' what does Wilhelmina even mean?"

"No clue." Ada played with a lock of black hair that had fallen in her face. Innocent.

"And they don't know you have a boyfriend?"

"Nah, they're really strict. They'd have a fit. They didn't even _kiss_ before they were married." Ada couldn't stop picturing William Birkin in a gaudy blonde wig, haphazard red lipstick, and a wedding gown... walking down the aisle and giving Wesker a big fat kiss on the lips. She unsuccessfully attempted to stifle her laughter.

"What's so funny, Dawn?"

Ada took her mistake in stride.

"I'm just thinking about how pissed they would be if they knew about us."

* * *

><p>Ada rolled over in bed. The solution was quite easy, she would tell him that her aunt and uncle were gone for the weekend, and she wanted him to come stay with her. He would jump at the chance.<p>

Now that the problem at hand was solved, her thoughts drifted back to Wesker and the project. She wasn't sure if there was anything else she could do. After all, she'd gained a reputation for insubordination. It was no secret that her skills—inside and outside of the bedroom—were the only reason she was still alive.

The phone rang again. Heidi was calling her. Ada sighed and picked up the phone.

"Heidi!_Wie geht's_?"

The reply on the other end made her heart stop.

* * *

><p>Leon sat on the floor of the apartment that Heidi shared with Simone and Max, doing his best to wipe the vomit off of his pants with a soapy dish cloth. The apartment was a surprisingly spacious one bedroom that might have just been a little bit bigger than his own at home. It was fairly simplistic, though the room held an abundance of magical paraphernalia. The bookshelf was full of heavy, leather bound volumes of mythological stories and several tapestries of dragons adorned the walls. It stank like patchouli. He saw <em>The Odyssey<em> sitting on the coffee table, as if someone had just been reading it.

"How do you guys afford this?" Leon asked Heidi, who was in the kitchen drinking glasses upon glasses of water in a desperate attempt to stave off a hangover that was inevitable.

"Oh, Max's family is loaded... they pay for all of it. I actually just moved in last week. All I have to do to live here is pretend to be his girlfriend when his parents visit, because they hate Simone."

"Why is that?" he asked, as if he didn't know the answer.

"She's fucking crazy, that's why." Heidi was much more candid while she was drunk. "I mean, I love her and all, but she's got spells tattooed on her chest for God's sake. And Ulrich and his buddies are just as nuts too, saying they're gonna combine magic and science and make us Gods. Max and I, we're the only two sane ones, but Max is too happy that he's finally getting laid to care about how nuts she is... and then there's Ulrich's girlfriend, Dawn. She is something else..."

"What do you mean?"

"Like... oh shit," Heidi covered her mouth with her hand and ran for the bathroom, slamming the door behind her. The sound of dry heaving filled the space. Leon shook his head. For all Heidi drank, she really couldn't hold her alcohol.

He wondered what she had meant about Ulrich wanting to be a God. The situation was becoming more and more bizarre.

Another retching sound came from the bathroom. Leon winced. His eyes went to Heidi's cell phone laying on the floor. An idea formulated in his head and before she could left the bathroom Leon reached over and grabbed it.

The contact list held the name, "Dawn." He pressed the call button.

It rang.

Once.

Twice.

An answer.

"Heidi... what's going on?" The voice was unmistakably Ada's.

Leon replied in English.

"Hello Ada. I'd like to know what's going on too." He heard a sharp intake of breath on the other end of the line.

"If it isn't Agent Leon Kennedy."

"That would be me," he snapped back.

"There's no need to be touchy. I think you and I have some catching up to do. Let me tell you what... write down this number and then call me from a phone that can't get traced to you, okay? Then we can talk."

"Right. We can talk. Like two good old pals."

The sarcasm was lost on her, because she had already hung up.

* * *

><p>Leon spent the night "sleeping" on the couch. He never fell asleep in an unsecured area, especially when someone could have made off with his backpack. He was absolutely exhausted. It would have been extremely preferable to check into the hotel, but it was all locked up at two in the morning.<p>

Thus, Leon spent the night staring wide-eyed at the ceiling of the apartment. Heidi snored away on her mattress shoved into the corner. Simone and Max came bursting in at around 4 am, drunk as could be and mumbling about runic symbols. Leon continued to stare at the ceiling and waited for morning.

He was so tired.

As soon as daylight broke, Leon got off the couch and went to leave. He walked over to Heidi's resting place and shook her arm a little.

"I need to go now." She sleepily nodded.

"I work on Sunday... you should stop in, okay?"

"Sure thing," he said, before bolting from the building.

* * *

><p>Ada couldn't believe her luck. Of all the agents who could have gotten sent after her, the CIA had sent Leon Kennedy.<p>

It sort of made sense, like that _wyrd_ stuff that Ulrich and his buddies were always talking about. Ada and Leon's paths seemed to converge at every possibility.

She'd always had a soft spot for him, ever since he had protected her in Raccoon City... of course, she'd stuck her neck out for him in Spain enough times for them to be considered more than even.

It wasn't about checks and balances though.

It was about the fact that she—against her better judgment—held feelings for him that she couldn't explain in rational terms. Feelings that had caused her to disobey a direct order from Wesker; feelings that went against every tenant she held as a spy.

Her feelings for Leon were dangerous for both of them.

* * *

><p>Leon checked into the hotel as soon as it opened. It was a sparse and Americanized place that marketed it's self largely to tourists. Leon handed the clerk one of his many ID's and prayed it was the identity the room was booked under. The clerk, an old and red faced man, squinted at the card and handed it back to him.<p>

"Ah, Mr. Jones. I was told to inform you that your room has been prepared to your specifications." Leon smiled. This hotel must have had ties to the CIA. "The parcel is in the TV cabinet."

"Excellent. Thank you," Leon replied. He took the room key from the clerk and made his way to the elevator. He thought about the soft bed waiting for him and a securely locked door. Not to mention getting to change out of his vomit speckled pants.

He got off of the elevator and made his way down the hallway.

His room was next to an emergency stairwell, as always. A personal touch of paranoia.

He slipped the key in to the door and walked in. The room smelled sterile and safe.

There was a long closet built into the wall next to the door. He made a note to check it. Firstly, he needed to take his backpack off.

Leon took a few steps forward. The closet door opened behind him. Before he had a chance to turn around, he felt the cold sensation of the barrel of a gun against his neck.

"I hate it when men don't call back in the morning."

Perhaps he was an unlucky man after all.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I hate to leave you all out to dry, but there's a spoiler for chapter 4 as drawn by the _fabulous_ Alias Black Claw linked on my profile.

(.com/#/d4pk9kn)


	4. Odysseus

**Chapter 4: Odysseus**

* * *

><p><span>Chapter Four.<span>

_Come this way, most admirable Odysseus, glory of the nation! Stay your ship, and listen to our voice! No man ever yet sailed past this place, without first listening to the voice which sounds from our lips, sweet as honey! _

**_-_Homer_, _The Odyssey **

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> This chapter has literally taken about three weeks to write. I am so happy to finally be publishing it! Thanks a million to everyone who reviewed, favorited, and subscribed. I hope you enjoy Ada and Leon's meeting as much as I enjoyed writing it. I made some quick grammatical fixes to this after it was published.

~Illustration for this chapter can be found on my profile. Go look at it!

**IMPORTANT (6/4): **Due to recent activity on this website, I've removed the explicit details from this chapter. The **full** version of this chapter is here: _tori-tots. deviantart art/Faxing-Berlin-Chapter-Four-306320619 _(remove spaces)

* * *

><p>A distinctly feminine voice barked at him, "Drop your bags. Put your gun on the floor. Don't even try to shoot me." He caught a glimpse of red in his peripheral vision.<p>

"What's all the hostility about, Ada? Since when would I shoot you? You can put the gun down," Leon said. The barrel of the gun was pressed hard at the base of his skull. She twisted it into his skin.

"Oh, Leon. Just calm down."

"I would love too. It's just a little hard right now with you trying to shoot my head off," he replied through gritted teeth.

Ada laughed. Her amusement was both irritating and alarming.

"How the hell did you find me, anyway?"

"You make it sound like it was a _challenge._ There are about 800 hotels in Berlin. But, you don't want to be somewhere too fancy, and the government doesn't want you in some youth hostel with your guns hiding under your pillow. After I narrowed it down to the mid-class hotels, I looked at the ones that are close to the university. I assumed you were in a hotel with ties to the American government. After all, not every hotel will agree to put a loaded shotgun in your TV cabinet."

Leon felt a lump grow in his throat. How the hell did she know about the parcel?

"I thought you would probably be staying in a more Americanized hotel, you know, room service. You might not care, but I've heard some of your agents get a little touchy when they don't get their free bagels. Anyway, the owner of this hotel is on the board of Viacom Media. He's got an interest in winning the favor of your politicians. After that, it was just a quick phone call to an underling who doesn't know that you're a special guest." Ada seamlessly switched into German and affected a sweet tone. _"I wanted to send some flowers to my boyfriend. He's from America; he's filming a bit part in a movie. He likes to pretend he's famous, so he books under a fake name. Can you let me know what his room number is?_"

Leon saw the vase of roses in the corner. A nice touch.

"It was that easy, eh?" She didn't respond. "I'll have to let the boys back home know that."

"Take your jacket off and put your bag down."

"Easy, Ada. I'm getting there." Leon slipped his backpack off and let it fall on the floor directly behind him. Next he slowly removed his jacket, trying to not make any sudden motions.

"And the gun."

"Is this really necessary, Ada? We're not enemies."

"I'll shoot."

Now it was Leon's turn to smile.

"I don't believe you."

"Weren't you told, Leon? I'm a sociopath. There's no telling what I might do."

"That's a lie; you're anything but a sociopath. You won't shoot me. You want me to be here."

"And what makes you think that?"

"I don't know, _Dawn Ago_, what do you think?"

Ada's eyes narrowed.

_He had her in a corner._

"I'll shoot the ceiling then. How are you going to explain that to your 'boys back home?' Did you trip while you were holding your gun?"

_She slipped out._

"It seems obvious to me that neither of us want each other to be dead. Can you please take that gun off of my neck?"

"When you drop yours."

Leon sighed and took the Beretta out of his jacket. He removed the clip before dropping the gun on the floor and kicking it across the room.

He then extended his left leg behind him in an attempt to hook it around her legs and knock her off her balance. She grabbed the offending limb and twisted it. Leon stumbled momentarily before catching himself.

"I expected more of a fight than that, Leon," she scolded. His face burned with embarrassment, but he chose to ignore her.

"Are you happy now?"

"Very." She lowered her gun and walked around to face him. "It's been awhile, Leon. You're getting older, aren't you?" He involuntarily bristled at the comment.

"I could say the same to you."

"That's a lie and you know it," she shot back. It _was_ a lie. Ada was as gorgeous as ever and seemingly ageless. She could pull off playing the role of a twenty year old. She was wearing a simple red cotton dress with a scooped neckline and black tights paired with heels. Always with the heels.

"So, now what happens, Ada? I mean, playing hostage is great and all, but I need to go to the bathroom."

She didn't move an inch.

"It's right there," she responded coolly.

"You're not going to follow me in, are you?"

"I suppose not."

Leon exhaled sharply. He still had his Blackberry in his pocket. He walked through the small hotel room into the bathroom and locked the door behind him. He turned the faucet on full blast and pulled out his phone to call Hunnigan.

"Leon! Where are you?" She sounded urgent. He supposed he should have checked in with her sooner.

"Hunnigan, I've located the target."

"That was fast, Leon! Congratulations. Should we send support agents to bring her in?"

There was a knock at the bathroom door.

"No, not just yet... she's not with me," he lied.

The next knock was louder.

"So, what are you doing then?"

Leon was jarred by the sound of wood splitting. Ada's stiletto clad foot burst through a crack in the door.

So _that'_s _what_ those shoes were for.

"I haven't made contact yet! I gotta go, Hunnigan!"

"Wait, Le..."

He hung up the phone and slipped it in his pocket. He looked at the door with a mixture of horror and admiration. Ada had slammed her foot through the door and was wiggling it in an uncharacteristically frantic manner.

"What do you want, Ada?"

"Turn off the faucet!" she shouted. He obliged. She lowered her voice."Unlock the door or I'll shoot it open." He obliged once again. It would have been hard to argue with that sort of logic.

Ada pulled her foot out of the wood before storming into the bathroom.

"Can a man get a moment of privacy?"

Ada glared at him.

"Take your pants off."

"Do _what_?"

"You have your phone, and God knows what else in your pants. I could hear you; I'm not deaf. Take your pants off. Your shirt too while you're at it."

"Dear Penthouse... I was just checking into my hotel room when..."

She had already walked away. Leon shook his head.

This whole mess was one rookie mistake after another. What the hell was he doing? Granted, he hadn't slept in two days. Still, he should have known to not have gone waltzing into his hotel room without a care in the world.

"You always enter an unsecured area with your gun drawn..." he muttered to himself.

Now he was going to pay. If only someone had told him on his first day in the CIA: _one day you will be held hostage by an extremely hot female spy—who you may or may not have feelings for—that you have been ordered to capture, and she will make you strip for her._

Well, actually, he would have jumped on board for a chance like that.

Ada's sex appeal didn't make his mistakes any less glaring though.

"You're getting too old for this shit, Kennedy." he muttered to himself. She had won this battle anyway. Resisting would just make things harder later.

He quietly undressed down to his boxers.

"Stupid, stupid, stupid," he repeated to himself.

He was humiliated when he walked out of the bathroom, holding his clothes up to his chest in a heap. Ada was splayed across the bed, talking away on the room's telephone. She had his gun next to her on the adjacent desk and had placed the backpack next to her.

"What the hell are you doing?" he asked incredulously.

She briefly looked up.

"Actually..." she spoke into the receiver in flawless German, "make that two cheeseburgers. _Danke_!"

She set the phone down and sat up, grabbing the gun off the desk.

Leon cursed the day he was born; cursed the day he'd been hired by the CIA; cursed the day that he hadn't died in a zombie outbreak, so he could live long enough to parade almost naked around a hotel room in front of the woman he was supposed to be apprehending, while she pointed a gun at his balls.

He dropped his clothes on the floor. Ada gave him a ruthless smile.

"You're a skinny little thing, aren't you?"

"I prefer the term _lithe. _Who was that?"

"Lithe. I'll write that down. It was room service."

Leon fought the urge to roll his eyes.

"And who's going to pay for that?" he asked.

Ada shrugged.

"Who ever is paying for the broken door too. That's what taxes are for. Now then, where was I?" Ada began casually removing the contents of Leon's backpack and dumping them on the floor. "I never saw you as an Old Spice kind of guy."

"Why are you doing this?" he asked.

"God, you lose your clothes and your sense of humor goes with them. You can put the other ones on. I checked them," she said, gesturing to a pile of his remaining clothes on the floor. Leon nearly jumped into them. Ada unceremoniously threw the emptied backpack onto the floor.

"Give me your other pants," she commanded. He tossed them to her. She began searching through the pockets, while Leon got dressed as fast as humanly possible.

"Three knives, two cell phones, a can of mace, five false ID's, eight credit cards, a thousand Euros and a CIA badge... how did you get through the airport?"

"The badge helps," he replied. Ada nodded.

"I should get one of those," she said. "Your pants stink, by the way."

"Your friend's fault. Heidi was her name. She's a fan of whiskey," Leon explained.

"She's young," Ada replied. "You seem like the type that would ignore your limit too."

"Nonsense. I was perfectly straight-laced growing up," he lied. "So, what about you, Ada? Ever wake up without your pants?"

"I am always in control of myself," Ada replied, with a sudden seriousness to her voice.

"That's right, robots don't go to college."

"What did you say?"

"Oh, nothing."

There was a knock on the door. Ada gingerly picked the gun up off of the table. "Go get that, Leon... and don't even think about making a run for it, or I'll destroy your things." Leon inwardly groaned. She had it all figured out, the bitch. If he ran now, he'd have no money, no identification, no weapons, and no way to get in touch with HQ.

He got up and brought the tray of food back into the room. Ada was still sitting on bed. She waved the gun in the air like it was a toy.

"Hm... how about you put it down there," she said, pointing at the ground with the laser sight. Leon bristled.

"Mind being more careful about pointing that thing at me?" he growled in response.

Ada smiled and pulled the trigger.

"It's empty." Leon almost fell over in his exasperation. She was going to make him have an aneurysm.

She propelled herself off the bed and sat down cross legged on the floor. "So, how do you say _bon appetit_ in German?"

Ada lifted the metal cover off the tray. There were two cheeseburgers, a plate of french fries, and two beers. Leon hadn't realized until then how hungry he was.

"Well then, aren't you going to eat?" she asked.

"Ladies first," he responded.

"Now is hardly the time to start being polite."

"I'm not eating until you do."

"Do you think I asked them to poison your food, Leon? Come on, what kind of establishment do you think this is?"

"I'm charmed by your concern."

Ada picked up a french fry and garnished it with some vinegar before raising it to her lips. She gently nibbled at the end of it. Leon stared at her.

"Is that supposed to be sexy?"

Ada spit it out and picked up a hamburger.

"You should loosen up. It's good for your blood pressure. You have to worry about that sort of thing now, right?" Leon felt his face burn.

Ada laughed. He was irritated with himself for playing her game. All she had wanted was a reaction out of him.

She cracked a beer open and took a long drink before resuming to eat her burger.

"Cheers, Leon," she said with a smirk. "Aren't you going to drink yours?"

"I'd prefer not to."

"I didn't think you were a lightweight."

Leon thought about snapping back, but decided it wasn't worth it.

* * *

><p>When the food was gone, Ada stretched her arms out and released a yawn. She pulled her gun from a hidden hip holster and tapped it's barrel.<p>

"All this threatening you has worn me out. Time to go to sleep." Leon stared at her. "Well, go on. Get in bed."

"Seriously?" he responded, walking over to the bed and sitting on it's edge.

"That doesn't look too comfortable. Lay down," she commanded. "Oh, this one is loaded," she added, as an afterthought. Leon let his head hit the pillow and promised himself he wouldn't fall asleep.

* * *

><p>Leon woke up completely drenched in a cold, disgusting sweat. His heart was racing like he had just ran a marathon. Nightmares again.<p>

Sometimes he wasn't sure if all _Las Plagas_ were out of his system, because when ever he woke up from a nightmare, he always felt like his skin was crawling. Leon groaned; he knew he was going to be in a shitty mood for the rest of the day. Maybe he'd get up and pour a glass of whiskey and read for a little while...

Then he remembered.

Ada, the gun, the hotel room.

Getting into the bed and swearing he wouldn't fall asleep.

"God dammit," he muttered. He should have known he was fighting a losing battle. After not sleeping for two days straight, getting into the bed was signing his own death certificate.

He was still alive though. Ada wouldn't hurt him... right?

She was as beautiful as she was confusing. Had she been a normal woman, he would have gone after her the second there weren't any zombies biting his arm.

She _wasn't_ normal though, not in the slightest. She showed no emotions; not a thing in the world phased her. She walked through battlefields in stiletto heels. Her lax attitude to things that distressed him—a damn CIA agent—was both puzzling and oddly infuriating.

He had feelings for her, of course. She was a stunning woman, whom had on several occasions assisted him in life threatening situations. How could he not have feelings for her? But, she was working for his enemy, placing her firmly in the "do not touch" category.

But, God, how he wanted to touch her.

"Do you always scream in your sleep like that?"

Leon turned to see Ada, sitting in bed next to him, still cradling the gun.

"Only when there's a pretty girl next to me."

Ada laughed.

"You're a sweetheart. What were you dreaming about?"

Leon shook his head.

"Nah, it's how I get them to leave in the morning without making them breakfast. Anyway, I don't remember exactly what I was dreaming about. Probably Spain. It's always Spain." He was being unusually open with her, but Leon had nothing left to lose. She'd stripped him bare, both literally and figuratively. "So, let me ask you something. It's the least you can do, seeing as you literally have me under your complete control."

Ada arched her eyebrow.

"This sounds like it could be fun."

"No, not like that. Do you ever dream about Spain?" Ada slowly shook her head.

"Not really, no."

The dam burst.

"Do you dream about _anything_? Nothing seems to affect you, Ada. It's so confusing. I came back from a few weeks in Spain two years ago and it affects me every fucking day. I can't seem to get myself to just move on. It makes me feel like a pussy too, the pills and the therapists and shit. I didn't want any of that. I just wanted to do the mission, save Ashley and move on with my life. But it wasn't that fucking simple..." his voice ached with frustration."Sorry for rambling. I guess all I want is to ask, how do you do it?"

Ada sighed deeply. Leon thought she wouldn't answer at first. He was surprised when she finally spoke.

"You know, in my line of work, you really don't have the luxury of stopping and thinking about what you just did or what you're about to do. I just do," she stopped speaking abruptly.

"Come on Ada; don't lie to me. It's the least you could do after pointing a gun at my groin." She glared at him in response.

"The present has to have my full attention. Dwelling on the past is a distraction," her voice was clear and firm.

"Not even in your dreams?"

"I don't dream because I don't sleep, Leon... all I do is survive," her tone softened.

"Come on, you must sleep sometimes."

Ada shrugged.

"I don't sleep like you do, Leon. I don't go back home after a mission and resume my normal life. This is my life."

There was a stiff silence.

"Well, that's kind of sad," Leon replied awkwardly.

"We've all got our own personal tragedies," Ada remarked. She turned to make eye contact with him. "Let's not dwell on them now."

Ada leaned in and kissed him.

Leon almost choked in his shock.

"What are you doing?" he asked. She forced her hand over his mouth.

"You talk too much; hush," Ada demanded before she nuzzled her head against his neck and adopted a softer tone. "I really do like you; do you know that, Leon? I've always liked you."

* * *

><p>Her lips brought to mind cherries dipped in liquor. She was utterly <em>intoxicating<em>.

Seven years of desire and confusion dissipated between their lips.

Seven years of wanting and wondering.

Such a long time it had been since they first met; the beginnings of this strange infatuation.

He was becoming aroused, but his rational self was screaming at him to stop. Ada was his target after all. He was supposed to be _capturing_ her, not in bed with her. What the hell did she have in mind, seducing him out of the blue?

He was losing control of the situation.

She only desired to use him.

He couldn't give into her, to do so would be treason.

She didn't have any real affections for him.

He was sure she had ruined countless men with her charms.

She couldn't possibly really want him.

_Right? _

Leon's work ethic was going up against a few thousand years of evolution, and losing fast. She'd already captured him; she'd taken his weapons... logically, there was nothing he could do to make the situation any worse, right? If anyone ever found out that they had been in a bed together, they would assume that they'd slept together. Leon chose to pursue this course of thought.

* * *

><p>Ada was the siren; the embodiment of everything men loved and feared.<p>

Like an unbound Odysseus, Leon gave in.

* * *

><p>He kissed her this time. He kissed her like he wished he had all those years ago; he kissed her for every time he had failed to do so in the past; he kissed her for every battle they had fought together, every knife drawn, every bullet dodged; he kissed her for every night she didn't sleep, for every pill he swallowed, for every drop of blood on their hands, for every rational reason they had to stay away from each other.<p>

Her hands slid under his shirt, lingered on his chest, stroked up and down his waist.

His hands were down her dress, caressing her breasts, pulling at the strap of her bra.

"I want you to _fuck me_," Ada breathed in his ear.

She didn't need to ask twice.

He clumsily reached for the button of his pants and pulled them off. His erection strained the fabric of his boxers. She smiled knowingly at him and slid her hands back under his shirt before tugging it off.

Ada once again ran her hands down his body, tracing over the lines of his abs, sinking dangerously lower, grazing her fingers over the defined cut of his hips, listening to his breathing quicken.

"You are magnificent, _Agent Kennedy_," she said, lust filling every word, "and I have waited far too long for this moment."

She pulled her dress off over her head and tossed it off the bed, leaving her in nothing more than her tights and bra.

She was a work of art, perhaps God's Magnum Opus come to Earth. A fallen angel. Ruinous.

Her full breasts lead into a slim waist which flared out slightly at her hips. She had legs that seemingly went on forever, smooth and toned, and he wondered how they would feel wrapped around his head.

Her skin was ivory and soft, marked with a few faded scars, a subtle hint of her past.

Leon slipped his hands between the nylon of her tights and her bare skin. The feeling of the reveal was nothing short of erotic. He rolled down her tights, struggling to take his time and run his hands down every inch of her long legs, memorizing her body so he could replay the moment over and over again.

Her tights fell to the floor and Leon kept his attention on her legs. He traced them with his lips from her ankle, through the back of her knee, to the inside of her thigh, inching further and further up. She let out a gasp of delight.

* * *

><p>Seven years of waiting and wanting, seven years of cryptic smiles and stupid replies, seven years of lust and wishes and secrets only known to themselves; seven years were absolved in the rhythm of their bodies against one another.<p>

She was _wild._

He was _starved._

They fucked as if it was the last night on Earth, as if they'd never feel the touch of another person again, as if the world was burning around them and they didn't care.

Leon on top and Ada grinding her hips against him in time with his thrusts.

They didn't speak anymore in words, but in moans and gasps, a language of their own.

Ada's arms on his waist.

Leon's mouth on her breasts.

Faster now.

They held each other closer and closer.

They threw their bodies into each other, as if they could join into one.

They lost themselves in one another.

* * *

><p>Climax.<p>

Nothing else would ever feel so good.

Nothing else could be as vivid and extraordinary as his surrender, his defeat, the orgasmic treason.

Seven years had found their resting place: intermingled between the sheets in a hotel bed, woven into the sounds of ecstasy and desire, dancing across the breath on Leon's lips as he held Ada against his chest and fell asleep.

Odysseus and his siren, together at last.

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> Consider that my apology for keeping Leon and Ada apart for so long. I was so terribly scared to write a sex scene, but I really wanted too. Tehe. Please let me know what you thought of it. Did you love it? Hate it?

As always, this chapter is brought to you by Alias Blackclaw, who, _honest to God_, at one point received the rough draft of this chapter with an asterisk everywhere there should have been the name of a sexual organ or sex act. I don't know how she puts up with me.


	5. The King of Swords

Chapter Five. 

_Lovers may be - and indeed generally are - enemies, but they never can be friends, because there must always be a spice of jealousy and a something of Self in all their speculations. _

**-Lord Byron**

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I am so incredibly grateful for every review I've received for Chapter Four. Thank you all so much for taking the time to let me know what you think of my work. It makes my day. Particularly, I'd like to thank **Sara Nameer**, **thelexhex**, and **bhernandez02897 **for sticking with me from when I first wrote Chapter One on out. Lots of good things coming up ahead strangah'. Let's get reading.

~Wrote this chapter to Love Interruption by Jack White as covered by The Subliminal Reality Project. You can find it by looking up "Love Interruption Electric Cover" on Youtube.

* * *

><p>Leon awoke to the shrill sound of his phone's alarm clock with a hazy mind and stiff muscles. Had he not set it before he came to the hotel, God only knew how long he might have slept. His throat was parched and his head was throbbing. He went to rub his eyes.<p>

As if to add injury to insult, his right hand did not move. Further investigation revealed that he was shackled to the headboard of the bed by a pair of _fuzzy, red_ handcuffs, the kind you'd find in a sex shop. What a nice personal touch.

The full extent of what he had done last night hit him like a sack of bricks.

Not only had he been held hostage by Ada after a series of novice mistakes, he had subsequently slept with her.

The most ridiculous part was, had he not been handcuffed now, he probably wouldn't feel a whole lot of regret about it.

In fact, he wasn't sure if he regretted it anyway.

Now wasn't the time to wax over what he had done and how he felt about it. It was time to get out of the handcuffs. They appeared to be a cheap, novelty sex toy, not something meant to restrain a belligerent criminal. Perhaps he could break them with enough force.

His right hand was locked inside a cuff, while the other end of the contraption was secured around a stylish cutout in the top of the headboard, probably intended to make it look "modern." He pulled his right hand forward with as much force as possible. The chain didn't budge, and had it not been for the fuzz, he would have bruised his wrist. Apparently Ada went for the strong stuff when it came to bondage gear. He quickly dismissed the thought of Ada as some sort of dungeon mistress before he got distracted.

"Focus, idiot," he muttered to himself, as if there was someone around to agree with him.

Leon maneuvered himself against the back of the bed to sit up as tall as he could. He swung his free left hand backwards to hit the offending piece of the headboard as hard as possible. The cheap wood cracked.

The room already had a hole in the bathroom door, a broken bed wasn't much more of a problem.

He slammed his left hand against the headboard several times more before the damage was significant enough to pull his right hand forward and slide the opposite end of the handcuffs through the crack.

He got up from the bed and noticed he was completely naked. The thought of Ada handcuffing him while he was asleep, naked as the day he was born, felt simultaneously violating and somewhat sensual. He shook his head and tried to clear the thought. What the hell was he doing?

The key to the handcuffs was sitting on the desk, on top of a note and next to his blackberry. He picked up the note.

_Dear Leon,_

_ You will have to forgive me for my unconventional methods of getting your attention in the morning. I could have just left a note, but I wasn't sure that you would look at it, had I not given you some incentive to read it. I'm going to be out on some important business today that isn't of any interest to you. I suggest you contact your HQ and tell them that you will begin your pursuit of me tomorrow, on campus grounds. I will be able to assist you in your mission of "capturing" me shortly. I'm sure you're loathe to trust me, but keep in mind that I've always looked out for both of our interests. _

_ XOXO, Ada. _

Leon shook his head. He couldn't imagine what Ada was planning.

He read the last line over again.

_"...I've always looked out for both of our interests." _

Indeed she had. The more Leon thought about it, the more he realized that Ada had been looking out for his ass from the moment they first met.

So, why had he accepted a mission to capture her?

Because it was just business after all.

It wasn't just business anymore.

Things stopped being just business when she wrapped her legs around his head.

More and more lately, he had been skeptical of what the government had asked of him. He'd justified going after Ada by stuffing his moral qualms in the back of his mind and conjuring up images of Uncle Sam and soaring eagles, or some shit like that. Ada was an enemy after all.

He was so confused. Instead of thinking about it anymore Leon put on a pair of pants and went to call Hunnigan.

"Leon! What have you been doing? We've had you tracked as in the hotel for sixteen hours."

"I was asleep Hunnigan, ever heard of it?" he teased her. He could practically see her rolling her eyes at his ribbing. "Anyway, I met some people who know Ada."

"Great! What happened?"

"Well, they're a bunch of crazy twerps. They tried to read my tea leaves and stuff."

"Interesting. Did you make contact with Ada?"

"No, thought I met the Ulrich guy though, lovely company, by the way. He was drunk out of his mind and told me that 'my girlfriend has a penis' or something like that."

"Charming. I suppose Ada wasn't with him?"

"No, he said she was in the lab. I'm going to the campus tomorrow to look for her." He did what Ada had told him to. It wasn't like he had any better ideas. "Those kids were really strange. They were playing with Tarot Cards and talked about becoming 'reborn' or something."

"Do you think it has something to do with a viral agent?"

"I couldn't tell you. It would make sense; they're all scientists after all."

"Why did you hang up so abruptly last night?"

"I got food from room service. I didn't want the server to hear me talking to you," he lied on the spot.

"And then you never called back?" Hunnigan retorted.

"I fell asleep after eating."

"For fifteen hours?"

"I'm an old man, Hunnigan. I need my rest."

"Very funny, Leon. Just make sure to stay in touch, okay?"

"Gotcha."

"What are you going to do now? Could you make contact with one of Ada's group again?"

Leon remembered that Heidi had told him she worked Sunday morning.

"Yeah, the one works at a cafe near here."

"Go see if you can get more information on Ada's class schedule from her."

"I could use a coffee anyway."

"Good luck, Leon."

"There's no monsters chasing after me; I don't think I need it."

"Don't jinx yourself."

Leon placed the phone down on the desk. He'd never lied to Hunnigan before. He'd never slept with the enemy before either though. That changed things.

* * *

><p><strong>Wannsee, Berlin <strong>

Ada was doing some thinking. She sat curled up against the banister of the staircase in the foyer of the larger manor. In the upstairs bedroom, Ulrich was snoring away. She'd slipped a little something in his food last night; she didn't feel like putting up with him. There was too much going on in her head to add Ulrich and his aggressive sexual advances to the mix. She would be tempted to bust his balls right off if he came onto her.

The research that had been conducted in the university lab was spread out neatly on the table in the study. They hadn't yet done nearly enough experimentation to prove anything about the virus, other than that it killed rats with a stunning consistency. Two hours of heightened abilities and muscle growth, and then the little bastard's metabolisms gave right out. She shook her head. Wesker's plan was ridiculous.

* * *

><p><strong>Six Months Ago- New York, New York<strong>

Ada's red lipstick left a sticky residue on the styrofoam cup of coffee. She looked down at the weak brew and sneered.

"Cutting costs, eh Wesker?"

"As you are fully aware, Ada, until the deal with Tricell goes through, we are a bit _short on funds_ at the moment."

"That's because all your money is going to keeping that Valentine girl alive," she responded. A thinly veiled criticism.

"A bland cup of coffee is a small price to pay for such a revolutionary scientific discovery," he shot back, stern as always.

"If you insist," she replied, leaning herself onto the desk into a suggestive position. Elbows spread, breasts out. "So tell me, Albert, what brings me to this humble office of yours today?"

"I have an assignment for you, Ada," he said, perfectly stoic, eyes going right over her head.

She loved trying to make him tic. He wouldn't make it easy today.

Wesker looked out the window of the office space—it officially belonged to a banker the organization was blackmailing—and slowly smiled. Whatever it was he was scheming, he was proud of it. As always.

"I assume you remember the discoveries I made after disposing of Spencer, correct?"

Of course she remembered. Wesker had stomped around in a haze of homicidal rage for a month after he discovered his origins as a pet project of Spencer's. He was one of thirteen other children, bred and raised to further the Umbrella founder's goal of world domination, or whatever it was any evil corporation wanted. He'd been infected with a virus from birth that enhanced his physical properties—not nearly as prominently as Prototype did, but it did endow him with mental and physical capabilities beyond that of a normal person—and influenced him to seek out Spencer. The operation was named "Project W", and Wesker would have undoubtedly thought it was brilliant, had it not been conducted on him. As it was, she suspected that knowing he was an experiment was a bit of a blow to his self image.

_Fucking egomaniacs, all of them._

"Spencer's plan was obviously incredibly flawed... however, working from the basic concept of it: engineering a virus which is similar but superior to 'W', and implementing it in a carefully chosen pool of applicants. Whoever the virus accepted would be a suitable candidate for the New World."

New World. That was a phrase she'd been hearing Wesker use more and more after killing Spencer. Something that old bastard had said had taken root in Wesker's mind.

_**He's going insane.**_

"I attempted to derive a sample of Project W from my own blood; unfortunately, the virus has mutated in an unanticipated and irreversible way from the combination with various other viral agents. Due to the utilization of our available facilities at the moment, we need to outsource the manufacturing of such a virus. This is your task. Locate an available laboratory and staff. I will then provide you with a sample of the progenitor virus from which the W virus was derived. I also was able to locate the remains of one of my less fortunate siblings on the Spencer estate grounds. There is evidence in their tissue samples of the W virus. Given these materials, the resulting virus should provide the subject with enhances physical and mental capabilities, without uncontrolled mutation."

"That's a pretty tall order," she said, sliding her arms across the small desk.

_How am I going to pull this one off? _

"If anyone can do it, it would be you, Ada," he replied, leaning into her advance.

"Is that what you think?"

Her face came closer to his until she could feel the heat radiating off his skin and see the redness of his eyes through the dark tinted lenses of his sunglasses.

He gave her a rough kiss on the lips.

_**Sex on his desk again? How cliché. **_

* * *

><p>She wondered if Leon had freed himself from the handcuffs yet. It was a cheap trick, but amusing none the less. He could be oblivious at times, might as well make sure he noticed what she wanted him to see.<p>

The whole course of events were confusing. Ada was well versed in the art of seduction for personal gain, but things with Leon were _different_. He'd opened up to her in such a personal way. She had kissed him to get him to stop pestering her, but once she had started, she couldn't stop. She should have known better, she'd liked him ever since they'd met. Of course her attraction to him would spill over into her actions. Last night, she had told him that she was always in control of herself. What a lie that had been.

_**"Whatever we're doing with him will not end well."**_

_ "He's different though."_

_ **"He won't act differently than any other man when he ends up in a body bag because of you." **_

She had lured him into sex; she had intended to use him, but she found herself not wanting to finish what she'd started.

She cursed him for being so cute and eager to please her.

She cursed herself for wanting to love him.

She lastly cursed Wesker, just as he arrived.

He was always exactly on time. The brand new black Audi pulled into the driveway of the house slowly. Ada could hear the engine buzzing from her spot curled on the stairwell. The car resembled it's occupant. Slick, black, streamlined and merciless; thinly veiled power personified.

Ada had always privately thought that Wesker driving was amusing. It almost seemed below him. Wesker in a traffic jam; Wesker yielding to a pedestrian; Wesker pumping gas; Wesker waiting as a flock of ducklings crossed the street. What a strange image.

Ada sprung up from her place on the stairs and went to answer the door. She was dressed in a red pencil skirt and a black blouse. She pulled down the hem of her skirt to cover the run in her tights Leon's wandering hand had left.

She opened the door.

"Come inside Wesker. You look as handsome as ever, I must say." Blonde hair, chiseled features, nasty smile. He was wearing all black, as usual. Dress shirt, pressed slacks, dark sunglasses, bored expression. It might as well have been his uniform.

"Flattery will get you nowhere, Ada."

"It's nice to see you too," she replied, ignoring his rudeness. "Please, come inside."

"What a lovely house. Who did you have to crawl under to get this?" Wesker asked. He was in a bad mood. Ada just smiled.

"Very funny _Albert._" He hated it when she called him Albert. It suggested familiarity, which translated into some form of dependance. He would never admit that he needed her, but Ada Wong was the only woman who could slip through the underworld unnoticed.

Ada shook her head at him. "One of your Organization lackey's usually shacks his mistress up in here when she's not being treated for Bulimia."

"So you didn't sleep with him then?"  
>"I wouldn't say that."<p>

Wesker cleared his throat.

"Where is that wretched scientist boy?"

"He's upstairs, asleep."

"It's ten in the morning," Wesker growled.

"Not everyone is as motivated as you," Ada purred.

"I suppose not. I presume you have the research to present to me."

"Of course I do." Ada led him into the study of the house. It was furnished with heavy mahogany bookshelves, filled with volumes that the weapons dealer had never even read. The enormous desk in the center of the room was covered in charts, pictures of rats, and lab reports. Wesker flicked through the papers. Ada suspected that he had a photographic memory. It would be the least surprising thing about him. She ran her hand down his back. He bristled at her touch. Ada stepped back. He was perturbed by something, and whatever it was, she was sure it would be her new problem shortly.

"Is the research to your liking?" she breathed.

"How many people were involved in the research?"

"Ulrich, myself, and three of Ulrich's friends."

"How many of those other _friends_ know about the research?"

"The two girls know about the research."

"So, that's six witnesses. This is getting messier than I anticipated."

Ada frowned slightly. She would have been naïve to think that Wesker would let Heidi and Simone live, but it bothered her all the same.

"Do you think it's really necessary to kill the girls, Wesker?"

"They know too much."

"They don't know anything," she coolly replied. Wesker glared at her.

"Your insubordination wears on me, Ada."

"I don't think it's worth the trouble to kill them."

"The last time you spared someone against my wishes, he ended up having ties to the Redfield family."

"I was unaware," Ada said, turning her back to him.

_I know how to play this game._

"I'm two steps ahead of you, Ada," he said with a brief smile. "This research needs to be destroyed."

_**But the rules are changing. **_

"Excuse me?"

"While this little project has been an excellent diversion, it seems that you are incapable of staying out of trouble. What have you been up to at that hotel?"

"I don't see how this relates to the research." Ada drummed her nails against the desk top. She felt anxiety rising in her chest. He was tracking her. Of course he was. Albert Wesker wouldn't let her alone for a day in her life.

"Don't pretend to be stupid, Ada. It doesn't suit you. The hotel has ties to the CIA. Were you trying to sell my secrets away?"

"I was doing nothing of the sort, Wesker. Why would I suddenly decide to betray you?"

"I am sure we will uncover that soon enough. Regardless of _what_ you have been doing, I don't need this research anymore. Progenitor Version 2 was my last resort. Do not think so highly of yourself, Ada. You were not my only option."

Ada steeled herself. She was used to Wesker being dismissive and withholding. Perhaps he was just toying with her.

"This mission is formally over. Now, bring me the boy. He needs to be disposed of."

Ada turned to walk out of the room, a simple task which she would have successfully completed, had Leon _Motherfucking_ Kennedy not come bursting into the study, gun drawn, a cheesy one liner on the tip of his tongue.

"Should I have knocked?"

_**Shit. **_

* * *

><p><strong>Two Hours Ago- Berlin, Germany<strong>

Leon did as Hunnigan told him to, and prepared to go see Heidi. He sorted through his things that Ada had left sitting in the seat of the armchair. It was all still there: the false ID's, the credit cards, even the cash. Most notably, she'd left his special _parcel_ from the TV cabinet leaning against the chair. A shotgun. Leon smiled. Had she been conspiring against him, it was doubtful she would have left the gun in his possession. His Beretta was inside of his backpack, along with an extra magazine of ammunition. A nice touch.

Leon packed up his backpack, got dressed, and slid his handgun into his jacket. He hoped he wouldn't have to use it today. He tidied up the room and left, making sure that the "Do Not Enter" sign was firmly hung on the door knob.

Heidi was at the counter, chipper as always. The cafe was completely devoid of customers, as it was the first time Leon was there.

"Scott! I'm so glad to see you. Thanks for helping me out Friday night."

"Don't mention it," he said. "So, do you have class tomorrow?"

"Yup. I have to go to all my art classes... I don't like them at all. I can't wait to start my Biology classes. Dawn said we're going to be in Microbiology together!"

"You were telling me about Dawn before. What's she like?"

"Oh, Dawn is just the best. She's an undergrad, but she knows everything already," Heidi gushed. She had no negative opinions of anyone while sober. "Honestly though, I'm not sure what she sees in Ulrich. I guess it's just because they're both so smart. I mean, he's a good guy! He's just a little... brusque."

Leon thought that "brusque" wasn't the word he would use to describe Ulrich.

"It's pretty dead today, isn't it?"

"Yeah, people usually like to have breakfast and stuff with their families on the weekend."

Leon nodded. Their conversation had come to a standstill.

"So," Heidi said. "Do you want something to eat?"

"Yeah, can I have a doughnut and a cup of coffee?" Heidi spun around to obtain the pastry.

"Is jelly filled okay? We're out of the plain ones."

"Sure," Leon replied.

At that moment, a hulking man walked into the shop. He was dressed in olive colored khaki's, combat boots and a bomber style jacket. His light brown hair was cut close to his head. He looked like military, though Leon wasn't sure where he might have been from. Heidi spun around to greet him.

_"Hallo!_ How can I help you?"

"Are you Heidi Klien?"

She gave him a cheeky smile. Of course, Heidi would try to play around with such a menacing man.

"That's me!"

The man scowled and reached into his pocket. Leon turned around to see him pull out a gun.

Leon felt as though his heart was going to stop dead in his chest. He instinctively dove over the counter and pushed Heidi to the ground.

_"Verdammt!"_ Heidi shouted as the two of them fell to the floor. The man fired a shot at the counter. The bullet left an indentation in the metal base. Heidi started sobbing. Leon pulled out his handgun.

"Stay down, Heidi!"

She faintly nodded.

Leon heard the man take a lumbering step forward. He aimed his firearm upwards and took a blind shot over the counter. Nothing. The man ran towards the counter and Leon shot again. The bullet hit him in the right shoulder and he dropped the gun.

"That son of a bitch didn't tell me that the cunt would have some kind of bodyguard," the attempted assassin growled, in English.

"What did he say, Scott?" Heidi yelped.

"That you're a lovely young woman, Heidi. Why the hell is someone trying to kill you?"

"I don't know!" she screamed. Leon shot the hit man again, this time in the kneecap. The man fell to the floor. Leon pulled himself over the counter and knelled on the floor next to the assailant, grabbing him by the throat.

"What do you want with the girl?"

"Look, no hard feelings about your girlfriend, man..."

"She's not my girlfriend; she's eighteen, you sick fuck. What are you doing here?" Leon tightened his hold on the man's throat. He was bleeding a steady stream from the wound in his shoulder.

"All I do is follow orders, man."

"Who gave you your orders?"

"I ain't telling you!"

Leon took his gun out of his jacket and ground it against the mercenary's skull.

"Things can't get any worse, _man_, so you better start talking."

"You want my list? Look, I'll give you my list, and then you let me go? You're not a hardass, right, man? It's all just business, I swear," he begged. It always amused Leon how the inexperienced "tough guys" would melt into blubbering messes at the first sign of trouble. This hit man was obviously new to the field. No trained assassin would open fire with a witness around. Whoever wanted Heidi dead didn't anticipate that they would need a professional to do the job right.

"Heidi, come get his gun," Leon commanded her, switching over to German. Heidi timidly walked over to the discarded firearm and picked it up, holding it delicately. "And don't fire it." He turned to face the whimpering hit man. "Now then, let me see this list of yours." He let go of his his grip on the man's throat.

Shaking with pain, the man gingerly handed Leon a worn piece of yellow note paper.

_Heidi Kline_

_ Simone Braun _

_ Lucas Wagner_

_ Peter Richter _

Leon recognized the names of Ulrich's scientist friends and the girl who read Tarot cards. He wondered why the name of Simone's boyfriend was not on the list. Perhaps he was already dead?

"Are there any other mercenaries out looking for the rest of them?" Leon asked. The man shook his head.

"I'm the only one that I know of, so far. I'm sure that the boss will send more, once I don't come back."

"Who's your boss?"

"Look, I don't even know man. I've never even met him in real life... he's a creepy looking motherfucker though. We just talked through a computer or some shit, webcam, you know. He gave me the names of all these kids; said that they needed to be taken out. I just followed orders. This girl was the easiest one to find, that's why I went for her first. Nobody told me she had friends with guns."

"I guess your boss wasn't looking out for you so well. How do you communicate with him?"

"My phone, stupid motherfucker," the hit man's bravado was coming back. Leon smacked him in the temple with the barrel of his gun.

"Give me the phone."

The man groped through the pocket of his khaki's with his left hand and pulled out a cheap cell phone. He handed it to Leon.

Leon used his free hand to look through the recent calls. There was only one number listed.

"Do you just use this phone to call your boss?"

"Yeah," the man's responses were getting weaker. Leon wasn't sure how much longer he'd remain conscious. Not that he needed him to be so anymore. Leon got up from his leaning position next to the man and swiftly kicked him in the head, rendering him unconscious.

"Heidi, is there a phone here?"

She weakly nodded.

"Dial the police and then put the phone down before someone picks up. We need to leave right now; somebody wants you and all your friends dead."

"What? Why?"

"I don't know. We just need to leave."

Heidi ran to the office space of the store to dial the phone, and Leon pulled out his Blackberry and called Hunnigan.

"Yes, Leon?"

"We have a situation, Hunnigan. An armed mercenary came to the cafe where a member of Ada's group was working and attempted to murder her. I incapacitated him and retrieved his phone. He told me that he uses it to call his boss. He had a list of names. All of them are people involved with Ada."

Leon heard Hunnigan typing furiously.

"Okay, dial the number of the 'boss' into your phone... we're going to get a lock on the location... got it. Whoever has the phone is traveling southbound on Autobahn 111 at a speed of approximately 170 kilometers per hour."

"Sounds like they're late to work."

"It looks like they'll be heading towards Berlin. Do you have any idea where they could be going?"

"Not one."

Heidi came back into the room. She stared at Leon.

"Who are you talking to, Scott? Are you speaking English... did you have something to do with that man?" tears welled up in her eyes. Leon turned to her.

"I know you're really scared right now, but you need to trust me. All of your friend's names were on that list, except Ulrich and Dawn. Do you think that they could have something to do with this?"

Ada had said this morning she had some business to attend to this morning after all. Leon left Max out of the discussion for now, because he didn't understand what he had to do with anything, and he couldn't reveal how he knew Ada was up to something. She couldn't have meant she was up to this, right? Did she send the hit man?

"What do you mean?" Heidi responded.

"You guys were working on something big, right? Do you think maybe, Dawn and Ulrich didn't want to share?"

Heidi started crying again.

"They're my friends!" she whimpered.

"I'm just throwing darts here, Heidi. Do you know where Ulrich is right now?"

"Yeah... he and Dawn are at her uncle's beach house in Wannsee for the weekend."

Leon addressed Hunnigan once again.

"Did you get all that?"

"Yes, I can speak German too, Leon. Anyway, it's feasible that the person with the phone is heading to Wannsee. Regardless, if that's where Ada is, you should go there."

"What should I do with the girl?"

"We can't have civilians showing up dead after being linked to you. The German government won't be thrilled about that. Take her with you for now. She probably knows her way around better than you. I'll keep you updated with the location of the cell phone." Hunnigan hung up.

"Everywhere I go, I end up escorting some blonde girl with a bad guy after her," Leon thought. "We need to get to Wannsee," he said to Heidi.

"Okay, we can do that, but you need to answer somethings first."

"Fair enough, but can we leave before _d__as arschloch _wakes up?"

Leon put the man's cell phone in his pocket and walked out of the cafe onto the street. Heidi came running behind him, taking gasping breaths of air.

"Don't look so panicked," Leon told her.

"I can't help it, someone tried to kill me!"

"Shhh, keep it down. No one needs to know about your personal problems," Leon teased her, walking swiftly in no particular direction. "So, how to we get to Wannsee from here?"

"We need to take the train. Now, tell me what's going on and I'll take you to the station," she responded roughly.

"I didn't know you had an angry side," Leon laughed. His amusement was inappropriate for the situation, but only having to deal with one normal man with a handgun was a pretty good day, all things considered. "I work for the American government. I'm in Berlin to apprehend a person who is involved in a Bio-Terrorism organization."

"So, why are you chasing after my friends then?"

"Heidi, I think your friends are involved in Bio-Terrorism too."

She didn't say much after that. They walked in the silence of the early morning in a big city. Heidi looked to the ground and tried to stifle her slow sobs. Berlin swelled from buildings into trees up to the riverfront, where they entered the train station.

* * *

><p>Heidi slumped in the seat and stared into her lap. She was still wearing her apron. Leon sat next to her and watched everyone who looked at them. He didn't see any witnesses to the <em>incident<em> back at the cafe, but one could never be to careful. Heidi really needed to ditch the apron.

"I really fucked up this time," she muttered. Leon tried to comfort her by awkwardly patting her on the back. Heidi laughed. "Stop that, people are going to think you're some kind of pervert."

"Yes, Heidi. I _love_ touching shoulders."

She smiled at him.

"That's better; smile! Only one person has tried to kill you today."

Leon's phone buzzed in his pocket. He answered it.

"Hey, Hunnigan. What's our location on boss-man?"

"He's at Wannsee; good thinking Leon. The phone stopped moving outside of a house owned by a suspected arms dealer with ties to terrorism. This might get messy."

"I can deal with messy. Can you send the exact location to my phone?"

"Of course. Be careful, Leon."

"When am I not?" Leon laughed.

* * *

><p>The house was buried in the woods a good distance from the beach. It was a modestly sized, two floor hideaway, framed by trees on every side. It was hard to believe that this was still part of the city. There was a shiny black Audi and a cherry red Volkswagen Jetta parked in the driveway framing the house.<p>

"Heidi, you need to wait outside, okay?"

Heidi looked scared.

"What if you don't come out?"

"Heidi, you wouldn't believe the things I've come out of. Stay here, okay?"

Leon made his way up to the house. The thick front door was unlocked. He cracked it open. No trip wires exploded, no buckets of acid fell from the ceiling, no muscle-bound men with Gatling guns ran down the stairs. So far, so good.

He slipped inside and pulled the gun from his jacket, holding it at ready. He was inside the central foyer. It was obviously an upper class house: dark wooden flooring, crystalline chandelier, dramatic wound staircase.

The sound of people in argument floated out of one of the rooms.

"I was doing nothing of the sort, Wesker. Why would I suddenly decide to betray you?"

It was Ada.

"I am sure we will uncover that soon enough. Regardless of _what_ you have been doing, I don't need this research anymore. Progenitor Version 2 was my last resort. Do not think so highly of yourself, Ada. You were not my only option."

There was a pause. The man spoke again.

"This mission is formally over. Now, bring me the boy. He needs to be disposed of."

Leon held his handgun in front of himself and made his way down the hall to the room where the voices were coming from.

He took a deep breath and threw the door open.

Ada stood right in front of him, a look of shock on her face. Directly behind her was a blonde man dressed in all black, with a stern expression.

She had called him Wesker.

Albert Wesker.

The king of Bio-Terrorism.

_The king of swords. _

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> God, I just love separating Leon and Ada. I'm so mean. On another note, ever notice how Leon is the only character with a given middle name, yet he's consistently referred to as "Leon Motherfucking Kennedy" in fandom? It does have a nice ring to it. Anyway, savor the image of naked Leon in handcuffs, because Chapter Six might be a little slow coming, as I am absolutely bogged down with midterm exams right now. Wish me luck!


	6. Nothing Left to Lose

Chapter Six.

"_If you're looking for sympathy, you'll find it between shit and syphilis in the dictionary."_

**-David Sedaris **

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> This chapter took _forever_ for me to write. I'm so glad to finally be publishing it. I don't have a whole lot to say about it, for once. As always, thanks to all my wonderful reviewers. It means the world to me to know that people enjoy my work.

~Song for this chapter is Propane Nightmares by Pendulum

* * *

><p>Everyone in the room was silent for a what felt like an infinite moment. Wesker spoke first, raising his hands together to form a slow applause.<p>

"Congratulations, Agent Kennedy. You've found us. Your detective skills are a few months late," he commented, every word dripping with a bored sort of scorn. He turned to Ada. "It really is a shame that you didn't just kill him back in Spain. It would have been so much easier to clean up after. I can't have CIA agents turning up dead, especially not after they've been linked to the Germany project. The next thing you know, I'll have the American Government all over my business—and what they lack in intelligence, they make up for in sheer obtrusiveness." Wesker shook his head. "What an inconvenience you've managed to make for me, Leon."

Leon couldn't resist the urge to snap back, "I don't think I'll be bothering you much longer," before cocking his handgun and discharging a single shot at Wesker's head.

Wesker moved so fast that Leon could scarcely believe it. In one motion, he slid across the room and had his hand around Leon's throat. The other man picked him up, dangling his body above the floor like a flimsy rag doll. Leon choked in protest, Wesker's hand cutting off all but the slightest trace of oxygen. He saw angry eyes flash red over the brim of the mirrored sunglasses.

"Has anyone ever told you before that you talk too much?" Wesker growled at him.

Leon tried to cough out a response, but found himself unable to do so.

"Wesker, drop him," Ada coldly demanded.

"Why should I do that?" Wesker sneered, but he did as she said. The backpack broke his fall and Leon crumpled to the floor, sucking in oxygen as fast as he could. "I always knew you had a soft spot for him, but tell me Ada, what could possibly be worth risking your mission for?"

"I thought I didn't have a mission anymore," Ada replied, straight face, even tone.

"His presence has compromised our security," Wesker said, moving towards Ada.

She stiffened.

"He doesn't know anything."

Wesker stood in front of Ada. An impenetrable wall. He cupped her chin in his hand and pulled her face close to his.

"I can smell him on you, Ada, insolent slut you are. It's almost poetic though, if you think about it. The CIA's lapdog is fucking my bitch." He smiled wider now and released her face from his grasp.

Ada was rendered momentarily speechless. She staggered backwards from Wesker's oppressive stare. Thankfully, or perhaps not so thankfully for her, Leon took the opportunity he was granted to take aim and fire once again at Wesker's head.

The bullet hit the man squarely in the jaw and lodged there, not penetrating the bone. Wesker emitted a low groan of pain. The entry wound was absolutely macabre: all but the very tip of the bullet protruded from his face, bordered by splayed bits of bloody tissue. Wesker raised his hand to his face and pulled the bullet out with his fingers, snarling as he let the piece of metal drop to the floor.

"You _arrogant fuck_," he snapped at Leon. Leon stared in horror as the bleeding hole in Wesker's face healed with an astonishing speed. Wesker stomped over to the still immobile Leon's side. "I believe I may have overestimated you. After surviving Raccoon City, being handpicked by the government, and your success in Spain, I thought perhaps you might posses some semblance of skill or tact." Wesker grabbed Leon's gun straight out of his hand and squeezed the the barrel shut through sheer force. He then pulled Leon's arm towards himself and twisted it, listening in satisfaction as the bones cracked. Leon grunted in anguish while Wesker continued to speak. "Yet, it appears that you have been sliding by for the past seven years on dumb luck. Unfortunately, you would be more of an inconvenience to me dead than you are now, alive and disgraced. It's a tragedy that I am unable to relieve you of your pathetic existence, today." He let the last word linger in the air like a poison, a threat.

It was at this terribly inopportune time that Ulrich chose to walk straight into the scene of chaos emerging in the study, clad in nothing more than a pair of pajama bottoms and slippers.

"What the fuck is going on?" Ulrich shouted, an indignant expression on his reddened face.

Wesker turned to face the newcomer, a trace of blood still dripping from his mandible.

"Well, this saves me the trouble of going up the stairs," Wesker chuckled.

"What the hell are you doing in my house?" Ulrich spat, standing with his hands on his hips and his chest puffed out. It was meant to be threatening, but bore a likeness to a dodo bird instead.

"My, my, _your_ house?" He transitioned to English. "Ada, I really don't know how you put up with this brute so long."

"What's going on, Dawn?" Ulrich insisted.

Ada didn't answer, because Wesker had already pulled his gun out of his pocket.

"Pride goes before destruction and a haughty spirit before a fall," Wesker quoted, in German, brandishing his gun .

The irony was so thick, Ada could almost choke on it.

"Get that shit out of my face," Ulrich said. Even in the face of mortal danger, he was as argumentative as always. It was a character flaw.

Wesker couldn't just kill him then, of course. That would be too easy. Instead he was going to tell Ulrich his whole plan and _then _shoot him. Sometimes Ada swore that Wesker had learned his schtick from watching too many Bond movies.

_He's got to play with his food before he eats it._

"I was terribly disappointed by the quality of your research, Mr. Faber. For such a revered scientific mind, you certainly fell short of my expectations for you."

_**Here he goes.**_

"Excuse me! And who the hell are you to hold expectations for me?"

"Just shut up and listen for once in your Godforsaken life, you disgusting hog. I believe that Miss _Dawn_ gave you the samples of the Progenitor virus and tissue samples evident of an experimental virus. You had these for two months, and all you and your team has managed to produce is dead rats. In fact, by looking at these lab reports, I was able to ascertain in a few moments of reading that any attempt to implement the virus in a human would lead to uncontrolled mutations, the exact thing which we are aiming to avoid."

"How did you know the virus was for humans?" Ulrich asked, color slowly draining from his face, in tandem with his pride.

"You are quite dense, aren't you? Where did you think that 'Dawn' got these tissue samples from anyway?"

Ulrich stuttered out, "Her uncle... he works for a pharmaceutical company..."

Wesker chuckled. "Uncle? Incest is not my deviance. Regardless of what you have been told, you have been working for me, Mister Faber. I provided you with those samples. However, I am no longer in need of your rather sub par services." He then turned to Ada. "You see, Ada, I have a new _whore_ now. But, this one does as I say. Certainly, she does not have your particular charms. However, what she does have is power. Power that is now mine. This project was a backup. Tonight, my true path to Godhood begins."

Ada shook her head. "_Godhood_, Wesker? You're turning into Spencer."

She expected him to be furious. Instead, he laughed.

"Surely, you jest, Ada. Spencer was a weak old man who was too afraid of his own research to utilize it on himself. He was a coward. I fully intend on taking advantage of my own scientific finds."

"Are you talking about Uroboros?"

_He's just a snake eating his own tail._

"Initial experiments have shown great success. But, enough talking. Let us close this project once and for all, partner."

_**No. No more partners. **_

"What the _fuck_ is going on?" Ulrich growled.

"Shut up," Wesker said in complete monotone.

One bullet shut him up for good. The shot burst a hole straight through his skull. Wesker lowered the Samurai Edge and clicked the safety back into place. Ada involuntarily sighed with relief.

"Mercenaries have been dispatched to dispose of the lot of them. I'm leaving the rest of the clean up to you, Ada. As for Agent Kennedy, you two can settle your lover's spat without my help. I'll be in touch shortly." Wesker turned around and walked out of the room, kicking aside Ulrich's fallen body like it was a piece of garbage on his way.

Ada ran to Leon's side and sat down on the floor next to him.

"What the hell is your problem?" she hissed. "You come barging in without a care in the world and try to kill Wesker, like you're some sort of action hero."

Leon pushed himself up with his left arm and spat out a cloud of bloodied sputum onto the floor. Ada winced.

"Heidi's outside... he's gonna see her."

Ada cringed. She did not relish the thought of Heidi dying at Wesker's hand.

"Why did you bring her?" Ada snapped.

"Some hit man was after her... I got his boss's phone number and traced it here."

So that's how he found her.

"I suppose Wesker kept his promise," Ada said, grimly. She'd be much more sad to see Heidi go than say, Ulrich. "She was just an innocent bystander. Unlike that asshole." Ada gestured towards Ulrich. "My only regret is that I wasn't the one to kill him."

"Why is that? I mean, he was a jerk, but, did he deserve to die?"

"Yes."

Her response was so quick and hardened that Leon knew not to breach the subject further.

They heard the car start up outside. Ada peered out the sheer curtain of the study and watched Wesker drive away.

"I think Heidi's still alive," she said. "I didn't hear anyone scream."

"Well," Leon remarked, walking over to the window, "We should probably find her then."

"Is your arm broken?" Ada asked.

"I don't know. It's better off than my gun though," Leon laughed. "I'm too shaken up to feel it right now."

"Leon Kennedy, shaken up? Really?" Ada said with a sly smile.

"Yeah, yeah, stop the press. Government agent becomes slightly perturbed when face to face with whatever the hell Albert Wesker is. Anyway, I'm going to look for Heidi. I brought her here after all."

Leon exited the study and grabbed his left wrist in his left hand. It hurt like a _bitch_. Leon had heard rumors about Albert Wesker before—like that he possessed inhuman strength—but he didn't expect that he would be able to spontaneously heal from a gunshot wound to the face.

"Heidi!" Leon shouted into the hallway of the house. "_Wo bist du?"_

No response. Perhaps she was still outside.

"Heidi!"

The hall closet behind him opened and Leon spun around. Heidi came tumbling out of the confined space, tears streaming down her face.

"Oh God, you're alive," Leon breathed.

"I want to go home," she said, her voice very small.

"Trust me, I do too. But, there's some things we need to work out first and... what the hell are you doing, Ada!" Leon cut into English abruptly.

Behind him, Ada was pouring a plastic carton of gasoline all over the floor.

"I'm cleaning up," she responded, not even looking up at him.

"Arson investigators can smell gasoline from miles away."

"Well, I would usually prefer propane, but I work with what I got," she replied, her voice heavy with sarcasm. "Do you think anyone would believe this house burnt down by accident?"

"Well, I guess not," he stuttered.

She reached into the pocket of her skirt and threw Leon a keyring. He noted the lack of plush animals hanging from it.

"You and Heidi, get in the Jetta outside. I need to grab my things," she commanded.

Leon grabbed Heidi's hand and ran for the door of the house. He didn't want to see what was about to happen; it would be less to testify about later. He just about pushed Heidi into the back of the car and got into the passenger seat. Normally he would have been loathe to let Ada drive, but with his left arm completely useless, he couldn't really argue that he would be a safer driver than she.

Heidi was curled up into a ball in the back of the car.

"Did that guy kill Ulrich?" she asked, already aware of the answer.

"Yeah... he did," Leon said, not quite sure how to react.

"I know some English, you know. He said he wanted to be God."

Leon just nodded in response.

"He sent the hit man after me?"

"Yes."

"Then I don't think that I have a lot of time left," Heidi said, a sense of numbness taking over her voice.

"Look, Heidi, I work for the US Government... I'm actually pretty high up. I'm going to get this taken care of, okay? I promise," Leon sputtered, trying to make her feel better. Annoying as she was, she was just a silly girl who had stumbled into something much larger than herself.

Ada threw open the trunk of the Jetta and tossed in two suitcases. She then got in the driver's seat of the car. Leon noticed she was holding what appeared to be a Molotov Cocktail, or just a beer bottle with a rag stuffed in the top. She handed him a cigarette lighter. Definitely a Molotov Cocktail.

Ada held out her hand.

"Keys, please," she said in a sing song.

Leon picked the key chain off his lap and gave it to her. Ada turned on the ignition, shifted the car into drive, and then hit the brakes suddenly.

"Thank God this is an automatic, or this would not work," she commented, not really addressing either of them. Ada rolled her window down and held the Molotov out in front of Leon. "Light me up," she said with a smile.

Leon tried very hard to trust her, and lit the makeshift bomb.

Ada threw it out the window behind her and slammed on the gas as fast as hard as she could.

The fire blazed down a trail that Ada had made by strategically pouring gasoline in streams from the house to the driveway. Within a matter of seconds, the house was burning with a fury. Ada willed the car to go faster.

"Put your fingers in your ears and unclench your teeth!" she yelled at her passengers. They had managed to make it about a half of a kilometer away before the fire in the upper floor spread to the stockpile of illegal explosives in the basement.

The entire house exploded: the floorboards uprooting themselves like stray piano keys, the pretentious staircase collapsing into a flat disc, the volumes of books the owner had never read turned into quite useful kindling. The blast cracked a rivet into the road leading from the house, and almost knocked the car over. Ada held onto the steering wheel with a death grip, steadying the automobile.

"What the fuck, Ada!" Leon screamed over the cacophony of all manners of bombs and grenades overheating and releasing their fiery content.

"Are you okay?"

"Yeah, but..."

"Then I don't care."

Leon's Blackberry rang. He fished it out of his pants and answered it.

"Leon! What's your status?" Hunnigan exclaimed. "We detected an Earthquake in Wannsee. The point of origin is the house."

"Yeah, I kind of noticed it. There was an explosion. I'm stable, so is the girl. Can't talk now; sorry!"

He hung up. Hunnigan was going to be absolutely livid, but he would deal with that later. Priority number one was getting far, far, away from Wannsee.

They reached the Autobahn, and Ada slammed on the gas. The Jetta protested at her abuses, but sped up until Leon couldn't clearly make out the cars next to them. Ada wove in and out of traffic, dodging the sea of vehicles around them.

"Where are we going?" Heidi yelped, looking petrified.

"We're going to take you home," Ada responded, not looking away from the road. Her answer seemed to satisfy Heidi, who hunched herself up in the backseat and didn't speak anymore.

Leon was trying to piece together what he would tell Hunnigan when he called her back.

_"Uh, I found Ada, but she's on our side, I swear. Coincidentally, she's also great in bed."_

No.

He would simply have to tell her that he had found Ada and Wesker in Wannsee and Ada escaped while he was incapacitated. His orders would be to continue pursuing Ada, and nothing would be solved. Then there was the matter of Wesker and his plans. Leon was amazed he had survived the encounter with the other man. He must have been trying to lay low if he was worried about the impact of killing a government agent. But, why would he risk Leon and Ada informing the government of his plan?

_"Unfortunately, you would be more of an inconvenience to me dead than you are now, alive and disgraced." _

Disgraced? He must have been referring to his tryst with Ada. No one knew though, not yet at least.

Leon felt bile rise in his throat as he considered the implications of his actions.

* * *

><p>Hunnigan grit her teeth and popped open a new container of Excedrin. She was going to start billing Leon for her headache medicine, Excedrin Migraine ran about twelve dollars a bottle. The file which was laying on her desk right now looked just as innocent as any other plain manilla folder. The difference was it's contents: an x-rated picture of her coworker Leon and a certain black haired woman that Hunnigan immediately recognized as Ada Wong, getting <em>intimate <em>in a hotel room. Sleeping for fifteen hours her ass. It had arrived on her desk just a moment earlier, delivered by some unnamed clerk who dropped it off with no warning other than saying,

"Your boy is in trouble, Ingrid."

Hunnigan's official title was "Information Consultant", but her real job was cleaning up her agent's messes. She already had gotten a blacklist in the German news media on the explosion, she was filing the paper work to put the German girl into Witness Protection before Leon even told her it was necessary, but what she couldn't clean up was _this._ She picked up her phone and called the clerk.

"Where the hell did this picture come from?"

"It was emailed to me from a temporary Hotmail account this morning," came the stilted reply.

"This is the Goddamn CIA, in case you forgot. Do not tell me that you can't trace an email address." Hunnigan tapped her fingers against the desk, losing her remaining patience rather quickly. "I want to know where this image came from and don't you dare share it with anyone."

"Yes ma'am."

Hunnigan slammed down the phone and rubbed her temples. She wasn't sure how long she could keep the picture under wraps. Until she knew what was going on with Leon, she wouldn't disclose this rather volatile piece of information to anyone else. It was just a question of how long it would take before the clerk let out the secret.

"You better have an excellent excuse for this, Leon," she muttered to her empty office.

* * *

><p>They arrived at Heidi's parents house in Brück about twenty minutes after the initial explosion. Leon had managed to coax some directions out of Heidi. As they pulled up Leon pulled out his phone to call Hunnigan.<p>

"Hunnigan, this is Leon. We—I took—we're at Heidi's parents house in Brück right now. She's safe for the time being. We need to get her out of the country," he stuttered, trying to collect his thoughts and keep Ada out of it.

"Understood, Leon. I've already made arrangements with the local police department to secure her house. The paperwork to transfer her to the United States has been filed."

"You're good," Leon laughed admirably. Leave it to Hunnigan to move mountains and cut through bureaucratic red tape in a matter of hours.

"That's what I'm paid to do. Now then, let's talk about what you're paid to do," she said tersely.

"What do you mean?"

"I had a file come to my attention and well... I think it might just be better if I just showed you actually."

His phone beeped softly at the incoming message. Leon pulled the phone from his ear and checked the screen.

_How the hell did she? _

"Well, this is awkward," he finally spat out, at an almost total loss for words.

"Awkward doesn't begin to describe it," Hunnigan replied.

"Would you believe me if I told you she threatened to kill me?"

"No."

"Just checking."

"This is _really not funny_, Leon."

"I'm aware. But, we've got a bigger problem right now."

"Please tell me how there could be a bigger-fucking-problem than you sleeping with the enemy?"

"I didn't think you swore."

"I didn't think you slept with the enemy."

"Point. There is a bigger problem though: Albert Wesker is trying to manufacture a doomsday virus. Ada is on our side, I swear."

Hunnigan sighed heavily.

"Your missions stands, Agent Kennedy. I can try to make this picture go away, but you have to follow through. I can't authorize you to run off after Wesker with no proof though."

"What do you mean, no proof? I saw him!"

"Leon, you've defected," she responded, completely stoic. "I can't use your testimony."

"Defected?"

"I'll keep this under wraps for as long as I can. But, something like this won't stay hidden for long. I've seen it, and the clerk who delivered it was probably just a crony for the information department, so they've all seen it too. They're not allowed to take any actions with my approval, but they'll still talk. Everyone recognizes your damn hair."

Leon self consciously picked at a blonde strand hanging in his face.

"When this gets out, your career is over, Leon."

"How do you think they got the picture?"

Ada took notice at this statement.

"Picture," Ada said, "What picture?"

Hunnigan overheard the female voice.

"Who is that, Leon?"

"It's Heidi," Leon spat out impulsively.

"Then why is she speaking in English?" Hunnigan snapped back.

Leon had never remembered a moment in which he so badly wanted to be dead. He had survived a zombie apocalypse to die of shame, his mortal remains melting into the upholstery of a stolen car.

"Forget the damage control, Leon. This is beyond me," Hunnigan sighed. "You know, after all these years, I never thought you would go down sleeping with the enemy." She hung up.

Leon stared at the phone in his hand like it had turned into a pile of worms.

"What's wrong, handsome?" Ada asked with a smile. Nothing ever fazed her.

"I think I just defected from the CIA," came his shaky response.

She leaned in and lightly kissed his lips.

"Looks like you and I both have nothing left to lose."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> Hunnigan is going to be playing a bigger role in the story soon... I love her so much. Poor lady, Leon running off and causing her all kinds of problems. Anyway, if you're looking for more Tori-Tots to hold you over until Chapter Seven, I published two one-shots while I was trying to get my inspiration back for Faxing Berlin. See you all next chapter.


	7. Acceptance

**Chapter 7: Acceptance**

* * *

><p><span>Chapter Seven.<span>

"_Have you ever been in love? Horrible isn't it? It makes you so vulnerable. It opens your chest and it opens up your heart and it means that someone can get inside you and mess you up." _

**-Neil Gaiman **

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I particularly liked writing this chapter; I think you will all see why once you get about halfway in. Once again, a billion thanks to all my reviewers. I've been a busy lady lately, so I haven't been able to respond to all of you personally yet. I'm getting around to it; I promise! You all are the extra dollop of whipped cream on the Frappuccino of my life. There's a reason I don't use metaphors in my prose too often.

**IMPORTANT:** Sometimes, I'm really dumb. There's a massive continuity error here: Leon broke his right arm in chapter six, in this chapter, it's his left arm. I went back and changed it, but if you were paying attention, you probably noticed. My apologizes.

~Song for this chapter is So Cruel as covered by Depeche Mode.

* * *

><p>Leon wished Ada would have elaborated on, "having nothing to lose," but the local police force was pulling up to the curb of the house Heidi had grown up in. It was a cozy looking bungalow, framed by thick trees and a row of similar looking homes. Nice and normal and <em>safe<em>. Hopefully. The scent of a nearby farm wafted through the half open car windows, making Leon feel nauseated.

"Heidi, can you open up my backpack and get out the silver case, please?" It held his CIA badge, which was still valid, as long as Hunnigan could keep his escapades under wraps. Leon rolled his shoulders until they cracked and inhaled deeply, before he choked on the scent in the air. So much for relaxing.

He laid his head back in his seat for a moment to collect his thoughts. He was emotionally drained. His left ear burned from the noise of the explosion, seeing as he hadn't been able to do much in the way of covering it. Humor was typically the go to coping mechanism, but now that he had a moment to think, he wasn't able to muster up anything amusing to say to break the tension between the occupants of the car. Ada was disturbingly detached; Heidi was sobbing; there had been a dead teenager sprawled out on the floor in front of him moments ago; Albert Wesker was planning some sort of doomsday; they had blown up an entire house, and he himself was injured and possibly out of a job.

Nothing funny about that.

It was the picture that was eating at him the most. Where did it come from?

Before he was able to form a cohesive opinion on the day's events, a police office rapped at the window, jolting Leon back into reality. He struggled with the seat belt before getting out of the car.

"_Guten Tag_," he said, trying to keep a smile. If worst came to worst, he could pull out the bossy American persona, but he wasn't in a mood for starting anymore trouble. Drawing up an explanation for what was going on would be rough enough.

"You're Agent Kennedy?" the officer asked. He was a middle aged burly man with a seemingly permanent scowl. Leon spotted a partner behind him, a nervous young man. Must have been a rookie, sent to observe what was likely the town's first ever interaction with the CIA.

"That's me, sir." Leon flashed the man his badge. The officer studied the picture and looked up back at Leon.

"Did you just go through puberty, son?"

Leon grit his teeth.

"Stubble is back in style," he responded, trying his best to keep his tone lighthearted. No use in starting something. The older man shook his head at him.

"Well, I'm not here to talk about your fashion sense." As if he wasn't the one who brought it up. "Got our orders straight from the CIA. That doesn't happen too much here, as you might have guessed, so I suppose whatever this girl got herself into is pretty nasty. We're going to keep her under surveillance until the paperwork clears for her extraction to the United States. They got it all lined up for her, college and everything." Leon nodded. Leave it to Hunnigan to get everything worked out before he had even explained the situation. "Look, I don't want to ask too many questions of you, son. I talked to her parents earlier; they're fucking beside themselves. I'm not a wordy man, as you might have guessed. I'm done with small talk for today. You just give her your goodbyes and then we'll call it a night."

Leon let out a breath he didn't know he had been holding. No talking about Ada's presence in the car; no talking about his broken arm. The conversation had went as well as it could have, disregarding any assaults on his personal appearance.

"Thanks officer." He extended his right arm and exchanged a handshake with the man, before walking back to the car.

"Hey, Heidi, it's time for you to go home, okay?"

Heidi nodded. Her head seemed heavy enough to fall right off her neck.

"You're going to be going to America soon, okay? Brush up on your English." He gave her a halfhearted smile. She stared right through him. Leon thought it would be best to change his approach. "I'm sorry this happened, Heidi."

"He was my friend, you know? He wasn't the nicest guy, but he was still my friend."

Leon knew there weren't any words to help her now. She got out of the car and gave him a hug, burying her head into his chest for a moment, and then resurfacing to wipe away tears.

"Thanks for everything, Agent Kennedy."

"You can call me Leon, and I'm just glad you're safe now."

"I like 'Scott' better," she replied, before walking away.

Leon got back in the car and watched Heidi walk into her house, flanked by a police officer on either side.

"You and I need to talk," he said to Ada.

"About what?" She couldn't have been more blasé.

"What the hell is going on' sounds like a good place to begin."

Ada started up the car and slowly began to drive.

"It's not like me to reveal my plans, but since you asked so nicely, I guess I can let you in on some of it."

Leon tried very hard to keep his composure. She was infuriating sometimes.

"Wesker sent me to Germany to find a lab to engineer a virus in. It was supposed to be a splicing of two separate viruses; nothing that couldn't be done by a decently skilled microbiologist. The issue was that the combination of the two viruses lead to uncontrolled mutations. We couldn't isolate the gene that caused the mutation. Wesker got impatient, and put an end to the project; if you could call that an end. He's been acting strangely of late, ever since he started taking a serum his 'new whore' made up. I wanted to distance myself from him. I wouldn't be very good at this job if I got too involved with my supervisor after all." She smiled at her own little joke and turned onto a long, forested road. "Now then, tell me about the picture you were harping on over the phone."

"Somehow the CIA got a picture of you and I in a _compromising _position."

"Is that so? Must have been Wesker's way of getting you out of his hair without having to clean up any more dead bodies. He has a habit of remotely accessing my phone. It was on the table next to the bed."

"Charming."

"You know, I wasn't trying to sleep with you."

"Well, that makes two of us," Leon said.

"Don't be so sore about it. We're both out of a job now."

"It was a mistake."

"You don't really believe that, do you?" she replied, a half smirk adorning her face.

He didn't answer her. Truthfully, Leon had been looking for an escape... he had just hoped for a more stable one. His feelings for Ada were undeniable, but he couldn't trust her.

It was a bad position he'd gotten himself into, depending on her.

"Where are we going, Ada?"

"A little hotel. The kind of place that takes cash." She fished her cellphone out of her skirt and threw it out the window.

* * *

><p>"Don't move it!" Ada snapped at Leon, as he attempted to pull his arm away from her. "It might be broken. I need to set it."<p>

"It's not broken, it's just sore," Leon said in protest.

Ada shook her head and grabbed his arm, pulling it towards her.

"Ouch!"

"Don't be such a baby; I've seen you get hurt much worse. Hold it out straight."

The two of them were perched on the edge of a cheap bed, hidden in a hotel out in the country side. He had dumped his phones on the way there. They were down to a few thousand Euros in cash, two handguns, and a stolen Jetta with fake tags. It could be worse.

Leon let Ada wrap the brace around his arm. It was made of a tough canvas like material and secured with a series of velcro straps.

"Why do you have one of these just lying in the trunk?" he asked.

"Good luck. The man who owned the car has carpal tunnel."

"Did you steal it?"

"The brace? Of course."

"I mean the _car_, Ada."

"Define 'steal_._"

"Never mind."

"He said I could use the car. I doubt that this is what he had in mind. After we burnt his house down and blew up his stockpile and livelihood, I think the car is the least of his worries." She rose up from the bed without warning and began unzipping herself from her pencil skirt.

"Woah, woah, slow down. Before you get naked again, we need to _really _discuss what happened last time we were in a hotel room together."

"Don't be so vain. I was taking the skirt off because it's uncomfortable," Ada replied, sliding the tight garment down her legs. She turned to face the wall and let the skirt drop to the floor. Her tights were sheer and she wasn't wearing any underwear, again. Leon saw the slight rip he'd left in the fabric, above her knee.

"Bullshit. You _so_ want me." He laughed at the absurdity of it all.

"Is that so?" she replied.

Ada turned around. She strut towards him, swinging her hips with every step. She put her hands on his shoulders at sat down on his lap, facing him.

"So, what is it that you would like to discuss, Leon?" she whispered in his ear.

"This is a good place to start," he said, trying very hard to keep a straight face.

Ada moved against him just a bit, just enough to make the blood rush.

"I mean, I'm certainly enjoying whatever it is we have here. But, the thing is that, I'm supposed to be capturing you and you're supposed to be doing...whatever it is that you do. I've seriously fucked up my position with the CIA because of all of this though, and I need some answers before we go further."

She fidgeted some more and he bit down on his own lip in a desperate bid to focus.

"You shot my boss in the face. I think we're even."

"You have a point."

She shrugged dramatically and tossed her hair, like she was putting on a show.

"We're enjoying ourselves for the first time in our damned lives," Ada said, before leaning in to kiss him.

"Does this mean you're going to stop running from me?"

"I'll think about it."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Due to recent activity on fanfiction . net, the explicit content in this chapter has been removed and is currently being hosted on Deviant Art:_ tori-tots. deviantart art/Faxing-Berlin-Chapter-Seven-306321972_ (remove spaces)

* * *

><p>Simone sat, legs crossed, on the floor of the apartment with her back to the door. She had set a circle of candles around herself to help her meditate on the tarot cards in front of her. She inhaled deeply and pulled the top card of the deck.<p>

_The Lovers, Reversed. _

Simone studied the card for a moment and scowled.

It had to be referring to that Scott guy she'd read for. Some of his residual energy must have been hanging on to her. Unlucky bastard he was.

She shuffled and drew again.

_The Lovers, Reversed. _

Whatever was going on with him couldn't be good to still be lingering.

Shuffle.

_The Lovers, Reversed._

Simone bit her lip and pulled the next card off the deck without putting The Lovers back.

_The Tower, Upright._

"Fuck," Simone muttered. She slipped the cards back into the deck and took a deep breath. "Come on, clear your mind," she admonished herself with a shake of her head.

Simone paused and traced her fingers along her chest. She felt the slight bump of the ink under her skin where the runes were marked. She remembered the tattoo artist warning her that people who got tattoos of runes tended to face less than savory endings. She had assured him that she knew what she was doing.

Max was having lunch with his father in town. They were discussing some business deal that Simone tried to not concern herself with. Max's father wanted him to move to Italy with the rest of his family and begin some internship program with Tricell Pharmaceuticals, rather than finish up his degree. She wondered if his father believed that they had broken up. Probably not.

The program was supposed to take him away from her.

The front door clicked as it unlocked. The light footsteps indicated that Max was home.

"Simone, I'm sorry..." he said.

She did not turn around to face him.

She knew he was leaving.

"I know," she replied.

He shot her twice in the back of the head with a Walther P99 semi-automatic pistol.

The bullets entered her brain with a lethal precision, cutting off her body functions almost immediately. The resulting cascade of blood clotted in her mop of brown hair, forming a gnarled mess that the corner had to shave off when he performed the autopsy.

One of the workers at the morgue would notice that she had a tattoo above her left breast of the runic symbol "_hagalaz." _The official report had made the assumption that it was a letter "H" and stood for someone's initials.

Hagalaz. Hail.

It represented the acceptance of one's own fate, no matter how unpleasant.


	8. Sister's Keeper

Chapter Eight. 

"_Sin is looking for the right thing in the wrong place." _

**St. Augustine of Hippo **

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I am so tired right now. School is trying to kill me. ;-; It took me quite awhile to finish this chapter, because I'm really busy. I cut up this chapter into the days of the week to make it easier to understand what's happening when. Also, later in the chapter when Heidi is speaking in English, her dialogue is purposefully very simple, because she's not a native speaker. I swear, I didn't just crap up her dialogue by accident.

A billion thanks to **Sara Nameer** for helping me beat writer's block with her encouragement and by generally being awesome.

* * *

><p>His and her's was an overgrown summer romance that refused to sputter out and die politely.<p>

They made love under the stars that first time, with her giggling and tittering the whole time like the children they were trying to prove they were not. Just a skinny little upper class brat and a heathen flower child, fucking in the wet grass of their first summer as "adults."

She was a friend of a friend, the crazy girl you meet once by accident when two groups of very different people collide. It was summer in the city, he was interested in fantasy, and she lived it.

Simone. What a name. It suited her though.

Something big and bold from another time.

He'd never had a girlfriend before. The truth was that he was painfully incapable of interacting with others, especially not _girls_ of all people. Perish the thought.

His loneliness had lead him to escape in fantasy and books, dragons and spells, the normal ruminations of a sixteen year old boy with no friends and too much on his mind. The interest put him in contact with others like himself, awkward and shy boys who never really _connected_ with anyone.

There were words for boys like him: boys who couldn't muster up empathy or guilt or pain.

Boys who didn't cry when their first dog died.

They were ugly words.

So, he got used to faking it.

She came into his life, a cloud of brown hair and silk scarves, laughing a wind of fresh air into his stuffy upper class world.

He never knew what she saw in him.

Like everyone else, she mistook his coldness for shyness.

His parents hated her from the start, as he knew they would.

Even thought they insisted, he didn't want to hurt her.

But, in the end it came down to a matter of necessity.

_Either she will die now, or you will both die later. _

It wasn't a hard choice.

Because, when all was said and done, he'd never been able to connect with her either.

* * *

><p>Never in his wildest dreams did Leon thing he would be peacefully laying next to Ada Wong. Yet, there he was, his good arm wrapped around her waist, nuzzling his head against her shoulder. The pain in his left side had subsided to a numbness. He wasn't sure if that was a cause for concern or not, but he couldn't bring himself to care. She took deep, calm breaths and let herself fall close to him, wrapped herself up in him. The feeling of her skin on his was soothing. This was the first time he recalled just <em>being <em>with her without feeling like one of them was about to run off.

"What does this mean to you, Ada?"

She stretched out her arms and yawned, as if she didn't hear him. He spoke again, louder this time. "Is what we're doing.. I don't know, is this something?"

"Don't think about it too hard," she replied, flipping herself over in one fluid motion to face him. She gave him a quick kiss on the lips. "Just enjoy." She was so casual at times. It was going to drive him to madness. He needed to know now.

Before he gave up even more to her.

"Ada, please. This has been going on too long. All I want to know is how you feel about me."

"Haven't I already shown you?" She pulled herself a little closer to him and leaned into his ear, dropping her voice to a whisper, even though there was no one around.

Perhaps she was afraid to hear it herself?

"I meant everything I said in Raccoon City."

He wasn't sure if he should believe her or not. After Raccoon City, having learned Ada was still alive, Leon had tried very hard to believe that she had just said those things in a bid to remove suspicion from herself. It made the events easier to process. He struggled to accept that explanation though. If she had believed she was dying, why would she have lied?

Ada confused him to no end, and now that he had put his trust in her, he set himself to the task of figuring her out. A task he would undoubtedly fail at. She was dominating and harsh at one moment, then soft the next. As she sunk her face into his shoulder, he asked the question.

"Do you still love me like you did then, Ada?"

She lifted her head and shook it slightly.

"More."

He swore he could feel his heart stop in his chest for just a second.

"I want to stay with you, Ada."

There it was. The confession.

"I want to stay with you too, Leon."

They held themselves close to each other.

Two sinners.

Two traitors.

That was they had to be, if they were to stay together.

* * *

><p><strong>Monday<strong>

Slipping off the grid had been much easier than Leon had imagined. Of course, he had Ada to guide him, and Leon strongly suspected that this wasn't the first time she had needed to shed her skin.

They drove the first day, for hours and hours. Watching Germany pass him by through the passenger window, Leon felt weightless. Occasionally they stopped in small towns along the way, filling up the car with fuel and buying food. It was an absurd rendering of a normal life, Leon holding Ada's hand while she picked through a container of fruit and sought out the best looking apples.

"Where are we going?" he asked her in hushed English.

"I haven't decided yet. I hear the mountains are lovely this time of year though."

So they drove onward, up through winding mountains and thick trees.

* * *

><p><strong>Wednesday<br>**

Heidi was sick and tired of staying inside. That man, Scott or Leon or whoever the hell he was, had enlisted an entire brigade of police officers to guard her parent's house. As for her parents, they were livid.

"We told you that you would get in trouble in college!"

"Why don't you ever listen to us?"

The paperwork was processing. In two weeks, she would start her new life in America, under a new name in a new place.

"Brush up on your English!" Agent Kennedy had teased her, as if the complete and utter ruin of her life was some sort of amusement to him. Granted, judging by the snippets of conversation that she had picked up from him and Dawn—er—Ada, what had happened to her had been the absolute best case scenario.

Regardless of how lucky she had been to survive, she was going absolutely stir crazy inside her childhood bedroom. All of her clothes and belongings were in the apartment in Berlin. She'd been watching the patrol cars outside her house for the past two days now. She knew that they rotated shifts at 2 am. At that time, she would sneak out the window and run two blocks to her hometown friend, Christine's house. Christine would drive her to the old apartment, and they would make quick work of her belongings. The police hadn't been to the apartment yet, Agent Kennedy told her that they had no probable cause to investigate Simone and Max just yet, even if his name wasn't on the list.

Heidi got the feeling that Leon wasn't telling _anyone_ the whole story.

After all, if Ada had been working for the man back in Wannsee, wouldn't it be Leon's duty to apprehend her?

Heidi didn't understand any of it, except that she would soon be getting on a plane to Washington DC and start up her freshman year at American University. She would be majoring in business this time around. She was sick of art and science and all the things they had brought her.

2 AM came, just as it did every night, and Heidi climbed out the window of her first floor bedroom, while the officers out front chatted about their shift.

_"I didn't see anything unusual tonight." _

_ "What's so important about this girl anyway?"_

_ "Hell if I know. I heard she got herself mixed up in some foreign diplomacy matters."_

_ "Enough to get a hit put out on her? Man, and I thought my son got in trouble in college when he was arrested for public urination!" _

When Heidi knocked on Christine's door, the other girl greeted her with a massive hug.

Christine was a petite and soft brunette with muted features, more like an impression of a girl than a full flesh and blood person. She spoke softly.

"Man, Heidi, you really got yourself into some bad shit, didn't you?"

Heidi nodded through tears.

They drove in silence back to Berlin, taking their time on the autobahn, letting the other cars rush past them in a blur of headlights. Heidi felt nauseated.

"Don't worry honey, all we're going to do is get your clothes and go, okay?" Christine said, picking up on Heidi's anxiety. Heidi faintly nodded. "I hate to ask, but can you tell me just what you did to get a hit man chasing after you? The rumors are insane."

Heidi sighed. She knew that people would be wondering.

"I can't tell you much. I was working on a project for a pharmaceutical company, and things went bad."

They pulled off of the highway and drove through the mostly empty streets.

"This is a nice apartment you were living in," Christine commented.

"Yeah, one of my roommate's, his dad was on the board of Tricell Pharmaceuticals. He paid for it."

"The whole thing?"

"Yeah, the kid was really quiet... I think his dad was just happy that he had friends at all." It wasn't entirely the truth, because Max's father loathed Simone. But, Heidi was too tired to be reciting life stories.

They parked the car on the side of the street. They didn't expect it would take too long. Christine grabbed a large duffel bag from the backseat of the car.

Heidi buzzed herself into the building.

"Heidi Kline, Apartment 435," she spoke into the call box. The door unlocked and she handed the doorman her ID.

"Haven't seen you in a while, Ms. Kline," the doorman commented.

"Yeah, I'm moving out."

Before he could reply, Heidi and Christine got into the elevator.

Heidi swallowed a lump in her throat and stuck her key into the lock of her apartment.

"Just get your stuff and leave..." she thought. "Nothing hard about it. Just get it all over with."

She swung the door open and grasped for the light switch.

Christine started screaming.

Heidi turned around and immediately fell unconscious.

* * *

><p><strong>Monday Night <strong>

Leon suffocated in his sleep the first night. He woke up gasping for air. It felt like it was 200 degrees in the car, and he was melting inside his jacket. He needed air. Pushing himself up from the seat, he threw open the car door and promptly emptied the contents of his stomach onto the grass. In the driver's seat, Ada's eyelids fluttered. She was a light sleeper.

"Leon?"

"Just a second," he responded, taking a few gasping breaths of air in between words. He sat back up, and pulled the car door inwards, keeping it slightly open. "Can you help me get this jacket off?"

Ada sat up and tugged at the left sleeve of the jacket.

"Don't die on me now, Leon," she said. Once the jacket was off, she leaned in and kissed him on the back of the neck. "That would be rather rude of you."

"Sorry. I don't know what that was." He ran his hand across his forehead. It was feverish. "Do you ever just get that feeling, like something really bad is about to happen?"

"Once in a while."

"I don't know; I feel like I'm running away from responsibilities... like someone needs me."

Ada pulled her lips into a thin line.

"I suppose that's where we have our differences then."

"There has to be something you feel like you're leaving behind. I mean, isn't there anyone who you feel like you need to protect?"

"Just you."

Neither of them spoke after that. With the taste of bile burning a hole in the back of his throat, Leon knew that he would not be able to fall back asleep.

* * *

><p><strong>Thursday<strong>

Ingrid Hunnigan wasn't known for being a terribly emotional woman. Today though, today her nerves were shot. She bit down on her lip until her teeth drew blood. For the past five years, she had been a friend and a colleague to Leon Kennedy, who was in her mind the best damn CIA agent in the business. Until he had started thinking with the wrong head and left her and this sobbing little college girl in the lurch. Hunnigan knew that Leon and Ada had met in the past before, she had assumed that meant that they had fought and exchanged death threats in the past, not sweet nothings and dirty talk.

Heidi had been in interrogation for the past two hours, and in Hunnigan's opinion, it was entirely unnecessary. The girl didn't know a thing more than what she was telling them. Hunnigan stepped into the interrogation room uninvited, surprising the interviewers, Agents Hayes and Broom. The pair had been absolutely delighted that Leon was caught misbehaving. Envy was a nasty beast.

"This interrogation is over, agents," Hunnigan said, pursing her lips into a tight line.

"We're not done yet, Ingrid," Agent Broom barked.

Hunnigan tensed. His lack of respect for her was palatable. It was widely known around the agency that Leon and Hunnigan were close, and those who had welcomed his downfall with open arms were now trying to make her out to be some sort of laughingstock. She tapped two fingers against her clipboard.

"I'm afraid that you're out of time. If you feel that you need to question her further, you'll have to petition internal affairs." Broom huffed, but got up and pushed his chair in to the table. Hayes, never the best at thinking for himself, followed. "And your reports, gentlemen." Both men shot her a begrudging glare, but handed over the sheets of paper they'd scribbled on. "Thank you."

The heavy door slammed shut as the two men made their exit, and Hunnigan sat down in the vacant chair, across the table from Heidi.

"Miss Kline, it's a pleasure to meet you. My name is Ingrid Hunnigan. I'm a... business partner of Agent Kennedy's."

Heidi nodded along. Hunnigan sighed. Poor girl.

"I understand that you've been having an awful week, so I'll try to make this easy on you, okay?"

Nod.

"Was there any evidence of abuse between Simone and Max? Fighting?"

Shake. No.

"Do you understand me, Miss Kline, or would you like a translator?"

"I understand you." Heidi kept her eyes focused on the table. Hunnigan continued. The sooner they got it over with, the better. She didn't see any use in prolonging Heidi's pain.

"Did anything happen between them to make you believe they were unhappy together?"

"His parents did not like her. For me to live in the apartment...I had to pretend to be his girlfriend."

Hunnigan had heard of stranger living arrangements in college. She flipped through the pages secured on her clipboard.

_Maxwell Fischer... father is a researcher for Tricell Pharmaceuticals. Lives in Italy. _

Hunnigan furrowed her brow. The whole case was a wreck. Leon had disappeared; there was a string of dead teenagers across Germany; she had yet to come up with an acceptable explanation as to just what Ulrich had been doing in that house when it blew up to appease his family, and this murder made no sense. The door was not forced, which meant that the assailant either had a key, or the door was unlocked. According to Heidi's notes, they always kept the door locked. The remaining option was that Simone had let them inside, but the position she was sitting in when she died suggested that she was caught by surprise from behind.

"Moving on; did Agent Kennedy give you any indication of where he was going after he returned you home?"

"No."

She was at least speaking now. That was an improvement.

"You did say that he was with Ms. Wong, however?"

"Yes. They were in the car together. She was driving, because his arm was hurt."

"He hurt his arm in the explosion?"

"No... before that. There was a man there. I didn't see him. I heard him though. He killed Ulrich."

Hunnigan flipped through the other two agent's reports.

"Could he have been the hitman?"

"No, I don't think so. Different voice. I was hiding."

"Why didn't you tell the other agents about this man?" Hunnigan shuffled through her papers again, but found nothing about him.

Heidi shrugged.

"I didn't trust those two. I think they want to hurt Agent Kennedy. I remember him talking to you before. I trust you."

Hunnigan extended her hand to Heidi. The younger girl accepted and sniffled a bit.

"Leon is a good man," Hunnigan said. She tapped her free hand against the table. "I need to find him."

* * *

><p>Hunnigan was not a fan of sneaking around, especially when it came to tricking her employer. But, the situation warranted a little dishonesty. She preferred to make all of her decisions based on evidence, and didn't often operate on hunches. The situation called for some hunches though, too.<p>

At 6:00 pm, she went into a convenience store and bought a cheap track-phone with 30 minutes of call time. She paid in cash.

At 6:30, she went to the library and asked to see the phone book collection.

At 7:00, she sat down in the corner of a crowded McDonald's and activated the phone.

At 7:05, she dialed the number.

"Hello? Who is this?" A man's voice answered the phone. That was good.

"Have I reached James Caysen?"

"Yeah; what can I do for you?"

"Hi, Mr Caysen, I work with your Uncle. He's gotten himself in a tight spot, and I wanted to know if he made any effort to contact you. It's a very urgent matter."

"You mean Leon? I haven't heard from him in ages."

"Is there any chance he could have called while you were not at home? Perhaps he only spoke with your mother?"

"I really doubt it. Mom doesn't feel so hot most of the time; I don't think she'd be up for a long chat."

"Please, this is extremely important. I would appreciate it if I could speak to your mother. Even if he hasn't contacted her, she may have something useful to say."

"Between you and me, mom hasn't had anything useful to say the past few years. But, if you insist."

Hunnigan tried her best not to bristle. And Leon had said before that this was his nice nephew. She took a long drink of her Diet Coke and waited for a voice.

It was stilted but clear.

"What do you want to know about my brother?"

Hunnigan allowed herself to let go of the breath she'd been holding.

"I'm a friend of Leon's. He's in trouble. Has he called you?"

"What kind of trouble?"

"Well, it's about a girl."

The woman on the other end of the phone laughed.

"He called me. I told him not to worry about me. I'm doing better." She paused for a moment. "He said he wanted to...run away, I think. You know, he never had a life... after the job. I told him to go. He's not his sister's keeper."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> Hunnigan gets shit done. I love her. Hope you all enjoyed. My apologies if this chapter seemed rushed. I plan on expanding into the time Leon and Ada are spending together next chapter. Till then, thanks for reading.


	9. This is About to Get Messy

Chapter Nine

"_Love is like a tree: it shoots of itself; it strikes it's roots deeply into our whole being, and frequently continues to put forth green leaves over a heart in ruins. And there is this unaccountable circumstance attending it, that the blinder the passion the more tenacious it is. Never is it stronger than when it is most unreasonable." _

**-Victor Hugo**

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> I'm alive! I promise! The last month of school was a bitch, and I had to focus on getting all my studies taken care of before I started thinking about fanfiction again. But, I'm back now. Hopefully this chapter isn't too rough; I'm a little out of practice with this whole writing thing. A billion, "thank you's" are in order to my lovely reader's. I wouldn't be able to get my ass in gear without you all encouraging me. **  
><strong>

* * *

><p>"I love strawberries," Ada mused, dangling the red fruit inches from her lips. "I used to eat them all the time when I was a kid."<p>

The car was parked haphazardly in the grass off of a winding mountain road. Outside the windows, Leon could see nothing but total darkness. The thick trees blocked out even the moonlight. The backseat of the car was littered with grocery bags containing fruit and loaves of some coarse brown bread that Ada swore was delicious.

"So I noticed," Leon chuckled in response. "I think we might have gone overboard on buying fruit."

"Impossible." Ada plucked another strawberry from the container and passed it to Leon. "It's a wonder I still love these. I picked strawberries for years. I guess they remind me of home."

Leon's ears perked at the mention of "home."

"And where is that?"

"Washington state; if you must know. Yourself?"

"Michigan. Detroit, actually. My dad worked for General Motors. He's rolling in his grave right now; seeing his son sitting in a Volkswagen."

"How did he die?" Ada asked with an air of nonchalance. She popped another strawberry into her mouth.

"You're going to give yourself indigestion with all those strawberries."

"Nonsense."

"He saw someone getting mugged walking home from work and tried to be a hero."

"Rushing at a loaded gun to help a stranger? That sounds familiar."

"He was a good man. I hope he would be proud of me... despite my most recent choices." He punctuated the last part with a wide smile. Ada let her hand rest on his knee.

"I don't think you need to worry about that."

"I've always felt like I have this obligation to him, you know? Take care of the family and all that."

Ada shrugged.

"I try not to get weighed down."

Another strawberry.

"Uh-huh."

"You, being an obvious exception."

"I am an exception, aren't I?"

"You're a hundred and fifty some pounds of dead weight." Ada smirked.

"Yeah, yeah, sure. It's not like I ever took a bullet for you or anything."

"You ever think about that woman who shot you?" Ada asked, suddenly serious.

"Once in a while; when my shoulder hurts."

"Loving someone can make you do things you never considered."

"Like leaving behind your whole career and family."

There was an awkward silence.

"Damn. We're out of strawberries."

Ada threw the empty container into the backseat and licked her lips.

"Now what?" Leon asked.

"Let's take a walk."

* * *

><p>Leon involuntarily cursed when he tripped over an errant tree root.<p>

"Don't break anything else, handsome," Ada teased.

"Noted."

"Breaking bones and throwing up all over the place... how did you ever make it as an agent?"

"I had some help from a charming yet infuriatingly elusive woman."

Leon's eyes were slowly adjusting to the dark. The forest was beautiful in it's thick darkness. He felt like it could swallow them up forever. No worries, no responsibilities, no one at home waiting for him. Just him and Ada and the forest. He let his mind run wild. They would build a tree house in the woods, and snare rabbits for food. They would find a stream and get water from there, and save berries for winter...

"What are you thinking about?" Ada asked, studying his face.

"Becoming a hardscrabble pioneer couple," he admitted, wholly serious.

She laughed.

"What happened to family-man Leon?"

"Eh, a place like this, it makes you feel like you could disappear."

Ada sat down at the base of a tree. Leon joined her.

"You've got some loose ends to tie up though, don't you?"

"What do you mean?"

"Before you're out of the game for good."

"I want to see if my sister is okay," he confessed. "She was...sick, for a while."

Ada rolled her shoulders until her joints popped.

"I have one last matter I need to settle."

"That sounds ominous."

"When is it not?"

* * *

><p>The couple standing at Sarah Winter's door looked almost sheepish, holding onto each other and flashing her polite smiles. The pair claimed they were on vacation; Sarah thought it might be their honeymoon by the intimate way they kept glancing at each other. The woman was a little younger than the man and of Asian descent. She was wearing a Humboldt University sweatshirt, but her accent sounded American. The man was handsome; he reminded her of some actor perhaps. They took turns speaking to her in an attempt to explain their predicament.<p>

"We were going camping..."

"And we didn't know that our phones wouldn't work up in the mountains..."

"I need to call my sister and tell her when we'll be home..."

"We would appreciate it so much."

"We have cash, for the long distance call. It shouldn't take more than a minute or two."

Sarah had shaken her head and laughed at their naivety. She recalled her own honeymoon, twenty, maybe thirty, years ago. She had been just as enthusiastic, and poorly prepared. Living up so high in the mountains, it wasn't uncommon for lost travelers to show up at her door. She let the man use the phone, while his wife sat at the tiny kitchen table and observed her surroundings. In the background, a TV hummed with the latest news stories.

"So, where are you from?" Sarah asked, sitting down at the table across from the young woman.

"We're from the states."

"Oh, my nephew is living there right now! What part are you from?"

"Washington," Ada answered, not missing a beat. In the background, the news anchors were talking about a hostage situation in Berlin.

_"Negotiators are being called in..." _

"So you're from the capitol then?"

"Oh, no, Washington State."

_"Unconfirmed reports about the incident claim that a team of six to eight armed gunmen entered the laboratory portion of the academic building early this morning. They are demanding a cash ransom for each hostage."_

Ada did her best to pretend to be interested in the conversation with old Mrs. Winter, while the TV in the background spelled out the failure of her personal recon mission. Her only hope was the fact that the henchmen seemed to have gotten greedy and disobeyed orders. An amateur mistake. All the money in the world couldn't protect them from Wesker, if that was who sent them.

"My nephew lives in California. He thinks he's going to be an actor." Sarah smiled with a hint of cynicism.

_"Locked inside the building include two budding researchers for Tricell Pharmaceuticals. The Italy based company is putting pressure on the government to send in paramilitary operatives." _

"How interesting," Ada replied, her eyes glued to the set now. Tricell... that was the company Max's parents worked for... was Max one of the researchers held inside? Was Wesker going up against Tricell now? Did the man have some sort of vendetta against pharmaceutical companies?

_"In other news, the CIA has recently become involved in the investigation of the gruesome murder of university student Simone Braun. Miss Braun was found dead in an apartment owned by Tricell Pharmaceutical Research and Development head, David Fischer. It is believed she was romantically involved with his son, Maxwell Fischer. She was shot twice in the back of the head with a Walther P99 pistol. The Fischer family is currently residing in Italy, and were unavailable for comment."_

"Are you listening to me, sweetie?"

"Oh, yes, I'm sorry. I was just looking at the television. It seems that quite a few crimes have taken place in Berlin over the past few weeks. Maybe we should get a plane out of Munich instead..."

"Oh, I'm sure it's nothing to worry about."

"Well, you know, it's better to stay safe," Ada commented, inwardly amused at her cautious persona. Far less humorous though, was Simone's untimely demise. Thinking about the events, Ada felt like there was one missing piece to the puzzle. It couldn't be Max in the lab if he was in Italy now, provided the news was telling the truth.

"How did he end up in the cast?"

"Oh, he fell down the stairs at home," Ada made up on the spot. Leon would be seriously irritated with her if he could hear that.

_"News update: The two Tricell employees held hostage in the Berlin laboratory have been identified as Lucas Wagner and Peter Richter. Tricell is offering a million dollars for the pair's safety. The company has yet to offer negotiations for the lives of the other students and instructors inside. Here to comment on the situation is industrial ethics expert, author Norman Gantz..."_

Leon emerged from the office smiling.

"What did your sister say, darling?"

"She said that she can pick us up at the airport."

"That's wonderful. Though, we might want to look into leaving through Munich."

"What?" Leon asked, genuinely confused. "Munich" was not part of the code they had set up.

"Look at the TV. Berlin seems to be dangerous this week."

As bad luck would have it, as Ada finished her sentence, the news program shifted away from Mr. Gantz to announce some important news.

_"The Berlin Police, along with help from the CIA have identified a possible suspect in the Braun murder, a fellow University student whom went by the alias of Dawn Ago, who was an international student from The United States." _

"Well, I think we really should be leaving!" Leon announced. "Thank you so much for letting us use your telephone, and as promised..." Leon grabbed an unspecified wad of Euros from his pocket and dropped it on the kitchen table. A picture of Ada from her student ID, clad in the same damn red sweatshirt flashed on the screen.

_"Further research into the identity of Ago revealed that she was not an American citizen, and in fact did not exist in the national registry of any country at all. Ago has been missing since the time of the Braun murder."_

"Thank you for your time," Ada said to the woman, keeping a cool exterior. She grabbed Leon's hand and walked to the front door, not daring to look behind her.

* * *

><p>"So, how did tying up your loose ends go then?"<p>

"My sister approves of you."

"I'm flattered." Ada smiled. "It seems that I'm going to have some challenges finishing up my escapades."

"You should get rid of that sweatshirt."

"I agree."

"Maybe dye your hair blonde."

"Do you have a thing for blondes, Leon?"

"Absolutely not. I appreciate all hair colors."

"I need to retrieve the sample of what we were working on in Berlin," Ada announced. No sense in trying to cover that up now.

"You sure love picking up samples, don't you?"

"You could say so."

"Who wants this one?"

"Don't be such a cynic. I want to destroy it."

"There's just one little complication."

"Isn't there always?"

"There's a hostage situation at the science building."

"Of course there is."

"They're there for the virus. I need to get it first."

The rest of the ride went in silence. At one point, Ada stopped the car to take her sweatshirt off and toss it in a dumpster. Leon questioned the logic of leaving Berlin to come running straight back into the lion's mouth, but Ada was damn insistent on picking up the sample before anyone else could. From what he had heard, the project was wholly a failure, and he didn't understand why she needed to even destroy it.

It occurred to him that he didn't trust her.

* * *

><p>Almost immediately after she finished speaking to Leon's sister, Hunnigan's work mobile rang. She wiped her fingers off and picked it up.<p>

"Hunnigan, this is Hayes. We need you in the office right now."

"On my way," she replied. Working for the CIA was not a 9-5 sort of career, no matter what her job description had promised. She walked out of the McDonald's, throwing the track-phone away along with her soda. It took her only a few minutes to walk to her office, and upon arriving, she found a photo of Ada Wong on her desk, accompanied by a news briefing on the woman's fugitive status. She grabbed the materials and made her way to Hayes' office.

Hunnigan put the news briefing down on Agent Hayes' desk. Her eyes expressed the sentiment, "this better be good."

"Micheal, can you tell me what this is about? I don't recall authorizing this," she said, trying to be as civil as possible.

"Well, Ingrid, it was either your boy or his ladyfriend, as seeing as she's not on the government's payroll, we went with her," Hayes offered up in a halfhearted apology.

"But, we don't have any proof that she was involved at all."

"The German government wants blood, and we want Ms. Wong. Two birds with one stone."

"Where is Broom?"

"He went home."

"Of course he did. Anyway, finding Wong is the objective, yes, but what about the _real_ murderer?"

"Well, that's where the problem comes in."

"I'm listening," Hunnigan said, sitting down next to Hayes. She didn't truly dislike the man, but he was easily swayed by his partner. Not a good attribute for a spy. On his own, Hayes was much easier to deal with, and had proven himself to even be competent when the situation called for decisive action. But, without Broom there to approve his every move, he got nervous.

Hayes swallowed and coughed a little bit before speaking. A trickle of sweat inched down his brow.

"A Walther P99 is registered to David Fischer, the R&D head at Tricell. His son was romantically involved with Miss Braun."

"You're telling me that the third in command at Tricell went to Berlin by himself to shoot his son's girlfriend?"

"Not exactly."

Hayes slid a manilla folder across his desk.

"Take a look at this, Hunnigan. Fischer the Younger is a head case." Hunnigan opened the folder. A psychiatric evaluation, with the Humboldt University letterhead sat on top of the stack.

"How did you get your hands on this?"

"The university pretty much let our people have whatever we could carry."

Hunnigan read over the summary page of the evaluation.

"Sociopathic tendencies? Why did they order an evaluation on him in the first place?"

"Page 6A."

"_The pigeon's wings were pinned down to the dissection table, and the chest cavity was open and exposed. At this time, the animal was still living.'_ How charming."

"The lab administrator got him with five counts of animal cruelty."

"Nice kid. Any history of domestic abuse?"

"Not in the son, but Fischer Senior's first wife had a habit of falling down the stairs."

"What happened to her?"

"Divorced in 89', right after he was promoted."

"You really did your homework on this case."

"Thanks, Ingrid."

"Let's stick to last names. So, are we bringing the kid in for questioning?"

"Here's where it gets tricky. He's gone."

"I thought he was in Italy?"

"Says the Tricell press secretary. Intel says he took a plane to Mali."

"What could he possibly doing in Mali?"

"Tricell has a plant there."

"I don't suppose we can extradite him based on torturing pigeons."

"By the time we clear through the red tape, Mali might have a different government."

A redfaced clerk came running into Hayes office, looking like he had just seen a ghost.

"Hunnigan, turn on the television!"

Hunnigan complied immediately and switched on one of the many sets in Hayes' office. It was tuned to CNN.

_"Humboldt University in Berlin, Germany is currently dealing with a hostage crisis in a Biology laboratory... we will keep you updated as we know more." _

"Someone get me on the phone with the Berlin Police Department right now."

Hayes studied the image on the TV of the science building surrounded by police officers.

"This is about to get messy."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> Next chapter is going to be a little more exciting, I promise! I'm still getting back on the writing horse. Let me know how I did! Since I've been gone, they've made the review button even easier to find...


	10. The Good Old Days

Chapter Ten.

"_The impulse to cruelty is, in many people, almost as violent as the impulse to sexual love - almost as violent and much more mischievous."_

**-Aldous Huxley **

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>I would love to say that I haven't updated because I've been really busy or something, but to be honest, I'm just lazy. So, without further delay, here is chapter ten! It's written totally out of order, because _I DO WHAT I WANT, THOR_.

Some housekeeping matters: due to recent activity taking place on fanfiction . net, I have temporarily removed the explicit scene from chapter seven, and I will be hosting it on Ao3... once it stops crashing. My username on there is tori_tots. Additionally, because fanfiction . net has announced the ability to create covers for your stories, I got ahead of myself and made one, a link for which is on my profile._**  
><strong>_

* * *

><p>It was so fucking hot in Mali. Sweat clung to the collar of Max's blue button down shirt, a poor choice for the weather. The room was spartan, reinforced metal walls and a concrete floor. He sat with his hands cuffed to the back of a flimsy folding chair. A woman's thick voice poured in from the hallway.<p>

"You mean to tell me that he has not completed his degree yet?"

"Not yet."

"Then what do you bring him to me for?"

"Why, Miss Gionne, he is my son."

"Do you think that means anything to me?"

When he had first entered the facility, Max had been stunned to see hundreds of men toiling in the lower portion of the factory. Their task was a decidedly unsavory one: lifting up dead bodies and hurling them into the furnace. The glazed look in the factory worker's eyes brought to mind a story Simone told him once.

_And then the witch doctors rounded up all the men in the village and cast a spell on them. _

He heard the woman arguing with his father again.

"Do you know how much cleaning up your son and his friend's security breaches have caused me?"

"Miss Gionne, with all due respect, it is not my fault that your mercenaries turned against you."

_The witch doctors were working for the sugar plantations. _

"You left the brains of the organization up in Berlin, and bring to me this sniveling wreck you call your son. We will be lucky if Richter and Wagner are recovered alive."

"Are you implying that those boys were responsible for my son's work?"

"Mr. Fischer, your son couldn't engineer his way out of a paper bag. I needed Ritcher and Wagner."

_So the zombified—don't laugh, they were real zombies—the zombified workers labored day and night to cut down the sugar cane._

The door opened with an unceremonious clatter. His father came in, staring down at his shoes. The great David Fischer, sinking inside his sweaty black suit, cowering before a woman who couldn't have been much older than Max. The woman who had been arguing with his father outside the door looked more like a socialite than a pharmaceutical mastermind. Her brown hair was done up in a massive bun, and she wore a distastefully low cut dress. Of more interest to Max than her breasts was the pistol she held in her right hand.

_Well, what happened to the witch doctors, once everyone was a zombie?_

"Hello, Max," she said. Her throaty accent made everything sound like a curse.

"Miss Gionne."

"I have some questions for you."

Max nodded in response. His father paced around the room, rubbing his temples.

"Where is Heidi Kline?"

"I don't know, Miss Gionne. I haven't seen her since the incident with Simone."

"The _incident._ Of course," Gionne rolled the word _incident_ for what felt like an eternity.

"Where is the sample?"

"It's in the lab."

"Are you sure?"

"Absolutely."

_You always ask the weirdest questions, Max. _

"Who engineered the virus?"

"Myself, Ulrich, Peter, and Luke. Heidi took a few peeks at it, but she didn't touch anything."

"And if you were given the necessary materials, do you believe you could replicate your results in the lab?"

"Yes, I could." Max puffed his chest out a little. The truth was, he wouldn't be able to make heads or tails of anything they gave him. Most of his lab work involved brewing coffee.

_Anyway, once they had all their zombies, the plantation owners killed the witch doctors, so no rival companies could learn their secrets._

"That's a shame, Max. The sample must be destroyed. Even the copies up here." The woman tapped her temple with her free hand.

Max added one more talent to Miss Gionne's repertoire. Pharmaceutical genius and an excellent shot. Right between the eyes.

_The scariest thing about that story is that it's true; don't you think so? _

Excella forgot that Max was still handcuffed to the chair. It fell with him to the floor. She winced at the sudden noise.

"You just killed my son!" David Fischer yelped.

"You are rather perceptive."

"You crazy bitch!"

Excella's mouth twitched as she pointed the gun at David.

"Your son was a waste of breath. I need the boys who made the virus. Right now, they are being held hostage by my own employees. I want you to listen to me very carefully, Mr. Fischer. I cannot afford to have any loose ends."

"Where the hell is Dr. Travis? He would never approve of this nonsense!"

"Dr. Travis is dead."

"Then who's the CEO?"

"You're looking at her, Mr. Fischer."

Excella fired the gun again. The bullet pierced straight through the blue tie David Fischer had insisted on wearing, despite it being well over eighty degrees. She gave the room a cursory glance and picked up her mobile.

"Darling, I'm going to need a clean up crew in C-42. And a new Research Director."

* * *

><p><em>Tragedy strikes Tricell Incorporated once more this evening, after the untimely death of CEO Dr. Gordon Travis. Travis suffered from a heart attack, possibly the result of mounting stressors, such as the hostage situation in Berlin, where two budding Tricell researchers are being held by a terrorist faction who oppose Tricell's recent forays into stem-cell research.<em>

"That's bullshit," Agent Hayes commented, observing the television.

"What's bullshit is that we're hearing about this on CNN," Hunnigan replied. She wasn't one for strong words, but the situation was beginning to spiral out of control—even moreso than when her top agent went rogue, and a less than flattering picture of him showed up on her desk—something she had not thought possible until now.

"I'm having trouble getting intelligence on Tricell," Hayes responded.

"Is Broom coming in yet?"

"Broom's mobile is off."

Hunnigan grit her teeth. No agent of the US Government was ever supposed to be unreachable.

"Who are you talking to in Tricell?"

"Their press representative. I can't very well send a squadron of agents to Africa. We don't even have a motive, or a suspected crime at that."

"Simone Braun was shot in an apartment owned by David Fischer, with a gun owned by David Fischer. His son was dating her."

"I do agree that the situation is tragic, but how does it warrant the CIA's investigation?"

"The son worked in the lab with the two boys being held hostage right now. We suspect they were building a bio-weapon. One member of the lab group is dead, the other is in our custody right now after an attempted assassination."

Hayes' face lit up with the sudden realization.

"So, if they were building a bio-weapon, and now they're being picked off... Tricell must be behind it somehow."

"There's our motive." Hunnigan said. Her mobile began buzzing in her pocket. She pulled it out and answered.

"Hunnigan, this is Leon."

"Leon! Where are you?"

"I'm in Berlin... and it looks like there's about to be an outbreak."

"What?"

Behind her, Hayes craned his neck in an attempt to hear.

"There's a situation at the lab. The Tricell mercenaries were sent in to kidnap the two remaining researchers, but they went rogue and tried to take them hostage. The two researchers got infected, I'm not certain how... it's pretty ugly looking. So far, the infection doesn't appear to be airborne, but we don't know anything about the pathology."

"How did you get into the lab... you know, never mind. Have the police entered the building yet?"

"Nope. They still think it's a hostage situation. The Tricell mercenaries were... disposed of. Eaten, actually."

"Alright, I'll get in touch with the police department. You stay alive, and I think I can make all this business from earlier disappear."

Hunnigan snapped her phone down and turned to Hayes.

"Kennedy's on the inside of the lab. We've got two carriers loose. Batten down the hatches."

She took a deep breath and closed her eyes for a moment. In moments where the panic and stress should have crushed her, Hunnigan could see exactly what she was to do next.

* * *

><p>Peter Richter couldn't have told you off the top of his head what an AK-47 looked like, though he might have been able to identify it out of a pile of guns. Regardless, he didn't need to know what kind of gun was digging into his back to know that it was bad news. The mercenary was a woman, he could tell that too, even though he was blindfolded. She had a scratchy voice—his comparison to the American Batman film had been received poorly, ended with the butt of a rifle colliding with his ribcage in a none too pleasant manner.<p>

"Where's Luke?" he grunted, for what felt like the fifth time.

"Luke, Luke, Luke. All you ever talk about is Luke," she growled. "He's safe as a kitten, just as safe as you, provided that Tricell ponies up the cash soon."

"Why are you doing this? You're scared, aren't you? Scared of the advances we're making in science..." She smacked him with the broad side of her gun again.

"Honey, I don't give a shit about your science. The only thing that matters in my world is cash."

"It's a shame then," he began, pushing his wrists against the confines of the rope they were tied in. The knot was coming loose. "That your world is about to change rapidly."

Peter pushed himself to his feet, still blind for all intents and purposes, and took the ungraceful, yet effective, tactic of throwing himself forward, in a sort of armless body slam. He felt himself make contact with the woman, as she fell to the ground. The cheap gun clattered to the ground, almost discharging. The force of the fall on his wrists had pushed the loose knot to the breaking point. Peter pulled his hands apart and ripped the blindfold off his face. Disoriented from the buzz of activity in the past hour, he didn't think of doing anything to the mercenary, who was passed out on the floor from the head trauma, or to even take the gun. He wouldn't have known to do with it anyway. He had one thought, and that was to get to Luke, the man who was closer to him than any brother could ever be. Peter took off into the hallway, where he was greeted by the sight of another mercenary—this one was a large and muscled man, one he didn't have a chance of knocking over—waving his gun in the air over a hallway full of hostages.

"Hey, asshole," Peter called, invigorated by the life or death experience. The mercenary spun around and pointed his gun in Peter's face. "No, don't shoot me; I'm the guy worth the big bucks," Peter called, with a hysterical little laugh punctuating the statement. "Where's Luke?"

The man pointed wordlessly towards the adjacent lab door. Peter smiled and nodded, the remnants of his hysterics not quite faded. He took off in a proud gait toward the entrance. Had he been paying attention to his surroundings in the least, he would have noticed the mercenary reaching for his radio.

"Luke!" he yelped, slamming into the lab, upsetting a table of instruments. Luke was tied up on the floor, as he had been. Luke's captor seemed to be a little more capable than Peter's had been—Luke's knots weren't coming undone. The mercenary sitting next to Luke was a bird like woman in all black combat armor and knotty red hair, perched on the lab desk and brandishing her assault rifle. The room was white and sterile, with a centrifuge sitting in the corner, whirring away. The hum was maddening. This was the room they began synthesizing the virus in... maybe the sample was in here...

"What the fuck do you think you're doing?" the bird woman asked.

"I'm getting _my_ virus."

"Like hell you are. Don't think that just because I can't kill you, don't mean I wouldn't shoot you in the foot."

Luke gave a muffled cry. His mouth was bound—another point for birdy—but he could still hear. Peter, emboldened still by the endorphins and hysteria yelped out, "Try me, bitch!"

She was a damn good shot; hit him right in the foot. Peter screamed in pain, and took a lunge at the counter. Despite the pain, he almost laughed when he saw it. Those idiots had just been sitting on top of the virus. Peter smashed a fist through the glass and pulled out the vial.

"You shoot me, and I'll take this. You ever seen The Hulk, lady? It would be like that." He dangled the vial above his mouth. "You know, they said that this shit causes uncontrolled mutation. That doesn't sound all that bad right now. My friends are all dead, my work is ruined, and you've got a gun pointed at the only person I give a shit about anymore. You ever hear about Umbrella, back in the late 90's? They said it was a chemical spill, but the rumor is that their head scientist went nuts and released a virus, then he injected himself with something and turned into a monster. Sorry son of a bitch—but, we all want to be God's, you know? Science is ego food. You can't spend twelve hours a day staring into a microscope unless you think you're the best person who's ever done it."

She stared at him with wide set eyes. Peter laughed.

"I hope you were listening, because people will want to know what the last words of Peter Richter were." Peter walked over to Luke, still holding the vial above his head. He ripped the gag off of Luke, and then pulled the stopper out of the sample and drank half of it, pouring the remainder into Luke's mouth.

As their corpses bubbled and burst, the mercenary ran from the room screaming.

* * *

><p>It was around two in the morning when they reached Berlin, but the city was wide awake. They parked the car two city blocks away from the campus. The black sky was cut with the lights of helicopters and police cars that partitioned off the campus grounds.<p>

"What's the plan?" Leon asked Ada, as she unbuckled her seat belt and pushed open the door.

"We get in, take the sample, and get out," she replied, simplistic as ever. She pulled a gun from the back of the car and slid it into her jacket. "You might want to leave your backpack behind."

"Very funny. I'm just getting my gun out."

"Shooting mercenaries isn't really my style, so I plan on avoiding detection whenever possible."

"I wasn't anticipating doing a singing and dancing routine myself."

"Of course." Ada shut the car door and locked it. "Just follow me."

"Gotcha, captain."

They walked at a brisk pace down the street, trying to make themselves look for all the world like dazed tourists with no idea that they were walking into a potential biohazard. The night sky was a deep indigo—like ink spilled from some archaic well—punctuated by a dusting of stars. Leon kept his pace steady behind Ada, easing past the "Do Not Cross" barricade, slipping behind a tree to asses their position. The campus buildings were marble behemoths from another time, stately and ominous, casting long shadows across the ground. The air was thick, like it was about to rain. Up ahead, the science building was illuminated by the light of a dozen or so police cars.

They were in luck—security seemed to be concentrated to the front side of the science building. The unlucky part was that there was a helicopter scanning the perimeter, and a single guard appeared to be stationed at each exit. Ada bit down on her bottom lip, before coming to a decision.

"See that guard standing under the tree?"

"Yeah, what about him?"

"And you see there's another door to the left of him, about thirty feet?"

"Uh huh."

"Head for the door to the left."

"What? There's a guard there."

Ada pulled her pistol out, aimed it towards the guard to the right. Leon balked.

"What the hell, Ada?"

"Trust me," she said, not even bothering to give him a glance.

"No, you tell me what you're going to do," he spat at her, angry whispering in the dark.

"After all this, Leon?" she asked, no malice in her voice, just her typical snide tone, which somehow hurt more. It was distant.

He took a few cautious steps toward the door from across the grass. There was a gunshot that split the air, like a crack of lighting hitting a tree—just like lighting hitting a tree. Leon turned to his right, and saw that Ada had shot a branch off of the tree the guard had been standing under. The branch had merely grazed him, but the guard, who was probably just a university employee, was thoroughly spooked. He screamed, and the man guarding the door Leon was to enter ran to his colleague's aid. Leon took off for the as-of-now unguarded door, keeping in mind all the stealth tricks he'd picked up during his time in the Secret Service. He could hear the guards over to his right laughing about the incident. He slid down into a tumbling position—another trick he'd picked up, and nearly slid into the door, which he opened with a crack. Ada came in after him. He hadn't even heard her.

"How'd you do that?" Leon whispered.

"Practice."

Leon surveyed the area around them. They were in a dull stairwell, lined with white brick. The halogen lights above gently flickered. The sign on the wall read _Untergeschoss,_ basement. A camera peaked at them from the ceiling. Ada caught Leon eying it.

"I'm sure the kidnappers have it on a loop. If not, we can just grab the tapes on our way out." Leon nodded, remembering that her last plan had worked. "Now then, let's go before the guards out there wise up."

The pair made their way up the stairwell, to the fourth level, where Ada recalled the lab was. Halfway between floor two and three, they heard an inhuman growl. It sounded like metal scraping together in a way, an ungreased cog stuck in a machine.

"Well, that's exciting," Leon commented. Ada began to reload her pistol.

"I only have a few bullets left."

"Sounds like the good old days."

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note:<strong> Massive thanks to everyone who reviewed last update: Chanto, the real Berliner and a huge source of help; Ruingaraf, whom is a dear, and without her invite, chapter seven would be languishing on my computer in all it's porny glory; Riot Siren, who is responsible for keeping me sane while I write; Sara Nameer, who is super encouraging and wonderful, and inspires my lazy ass to write when I don't want to; and Bhernandez, who always makes me smile. You guys are the best. Also, lots of thanks are due to my unofficial sounding board, SLT, who keeps me writing even when I think I suck. Virtual hugs to you all!

Until next time.


	11. A Hero's Welcome

Chapter Eleven.

_As far as men go, it is not what they are that interests me, but what they can become._

**_-_Jean-Paul Sartre**

* * *

><p>Ada and Leon held themselves steady to the wall, taking slow and calculated steps forward. They were professionals, and Leon was grateful for it, as he was so used to escorting civilians. Each of them kept their hand on the trigger of their guns, each of them took slow and deliberate. Despite the gravity of the situation, Leon couldn't help but appreciate how well they moved together, how connected they seemed.<p>

"What's our plan of action?" Leon whispered.

"Get into the lab, take the sample, get out."

"Preferably without shooting anyone."

"Preferably."

Leon chuckled, in spite of himself. He couldn't possibly get into more trouble than he already was after all.

"And as for whatever's making that noise..."

"That's our 'preferably."

"Of course."

The groaning hadn't stopped, but the noise was more distant now, as if whatever was making it was moving further away from them. Leon's relief was short lived, as the relative silence was cut by a high pitched and very much human scream, followed by the clatter of boots on linoleum, a noise he was rather familiar with. He and Ada both tensed and pulled their guns into position.

Their anticipation was short lived. The door opened a floor above, and someone—or something—came running down the stairs, practically tripping over themselves. Definitely _someone. _

Rounding the stairwell was a short woman in black combat armor with frizzy red hair. An automatic weapon was slung over her back, but she wasn't wielding it. Leon and Ada instinctively pointed their weapons at her.

"Whoa, calm down," she said, eyes widening at the presence of the guns. Her voice sounded like sandpaper. "You guys need to get outta here. There's some monster upstairs... shit, I don't even know what it is... the kid infected himself and then like absorbed the other one."

Leon shot Ada a glance and began to speak to the mercenary.

"Are you under the influence of drugs, ma'am?"

The mercenary looked up at Leon with a look of utter confusion.

"What?"

"I asked if you were under the influence of drugs. You said you saw a monster absorb a man?"

The woman shook her head, looking perplexed.

"No... no... it was that scientist, he injected himself with something."

"What scientist?"

"The fucking scientist... who are you?"

"Ma'am, why are you here?"

"I'm here with Tricell! What the fuck is your problem?

"So, you're not a terrorist?"

"No! What?"

The woman's face paled when she realized that she had confessed to Tricell's involvement. She reached for her gun, but Ada was quicker, firing a shot into her forehead.

"Oh my God," Leon mumbled.

"She was going to spray us down," Ada said, stoic as could be. The mercenary was laying on the floor, blood gushing out of her temple.

"She looks kinda like Simone, doesn't she?" Leon mused.

Ada didn't waste time on sentiment, searching the woman for supplies. She grabbed a radio and a handgun, emptying the clip.

"Five for you, five for me." She passed Leon the bullets, and shoved her's into the pocket of her pants.

"You sure that was..."

"Leon. She was going to _kill_ us."

Leon nodded in agreement. Before he could think to say anymore, the radio fizzled with static before a voice came through it.

"Sparrow? Come in, Sparrow."

Ada made a rough coughing noise and picked up the radio.

"This is Sparrow," she hacked into the receiver, in a decent impression of the woman's voice.

"Wolf and Thunder aren't responding. We're calling in an evac. Get out of there without getting shot. Command recommends going through the backdoor."

"Understood. Sparrow out."

Ada clicked off the radio.

"Wolf and Thunder? Really?" Leon said.

"Mercenaries have such egos," Ada responded, with what sounded like a sigh.

Leon pulled his mobile out of his pocket.

"I need to call Hunnigan... see what we can find out."

Hunnigan picked up her mobile on the first ring, as always.

"Hunnigan, this is Leon."

"Leon! Where are you?"

"I'm in Berlin... and it looks like there's about to be an outbreak."

"What?"

"There's a situation at the lab. The Tricell mercenaries were sent in to kidnap the two remaining researchers, but they went rogue and tried to take them hostage. The two researchers got infected, I'm not certain how... it's pretty ugly looking. So far, the infection doesn't appear to be airborne, but we don't know anything about the pathology."

"How did you get into the lab... you know, never mind. Have the police entered the building yet?"

"Nope. They still think it's a hostage situation. The Tricell mercenaries were... disposed of. Eaten, actually."

"Alright, I'll get in touch with the police department. You stay alive, and I think I can make all this business from earlier disappear."

Leon hung up the phone. "Making all the business from earlier," disappear was a tempting proposition, but he wasn't about to make any decisions yet. Staying alive though, that wasn't a choice, but a priority.

Very suddenly, the stairwell went dark for a moment, and there was the sound of metal crashing with brick.

"The door," Ada whispered. "Shit, the door!"

Leon craned his neck to look up the stairs, and saw the silhouette of a humanoid creature with a huge mass. The light from the fourth floor hallway illuminated the creature's strange features. It appeared to have two heads and four arm like limbs.

"How many samples were there?" Leon whispered to Ada.

"One," she responded. "Just one."

"In that case... we should probably get going..."

The creature emitted an inhuman roar, and charged down the staircase. Leon and Ada spun around as fast as possible and ran. At the third floor, Ada turned and ran for the door.

"What are you doing? We need to get out of here!" Leon exclaimed.

"Follow me!" Ada yelled in response, pulling the door open. Unwilling to leave her behind, Leon followed.

The third floor was entirely empty. If any mercenaries remained, they were on the fourth floor. The only lights on were the emergency generator lights, which bathed the hallway in an amber glow.

"We need to destroy the body... otherwise someone could still take a sample," Ada explained.

"Is that what this is really about?"

"Leon; listen to me for _once._ I'm trying to leave all this behind, and the only way I can is by destroying anything that remains of the Berlin project. If any of what they were working on gets back to Tricell, they could refine it into something far more efficient..."

The door from the stairwell crumbled, as the creature barreled into the hall. Leon could see it more clearly now; the monster was nearly eight feet tall, and covered in what appeared to be spongy muscle mass. It had two heads, the features of which were obscured by a waxy layer of skin to protect the eyes, which stood out prominently. It had four arms, a primary pair being the more muscular of the two, and a secondary pair which jutted from below the shoulders, and had little in the way of muscle mass.

"You think this one is gonna mutate too?" Leon asked.

"It's no G-Virus, if that's what you're asking." Ada responded. "But it's dangerous. It absorbs it's prey." Ada punctuated the comment by taking aim at the creature's legs and firing two bullets into where she assumed the kneecaps would be.

"Look for a door that says 'cryogenics;' I'll hold It off!"

"Ada!"

"Just do it, Leon!"

* * *

><p>"Agent Broom! Why was I unable to reach you on your mobile? You need to be available at all times as an agent of the CIA..."<p>

Hunnigan was cut off by the barrel of a gun shoved into her ribs.

Broom had walked into the room just moments ago, after Hunnigan had been unable to reach him for hours. Hayes was nowhere to be found now, probably off chasing the skirt of some secretary, instead of making coffee like Hunnigan had asked.

"What is this about, Agent Broom?"

She chose her words carefully. The gun wasn't visible under her desk, and if she drew attention to the situation via the security camera, Broom might shoot.

"I need you to call in an air strike on the science building."

He looked her straight in the eyes, and Hunnigan resisted the urge to squirm in her seat. He wasn't terribly intimidating—average height with clean cut brown hair and gray eyes—but Hunnigan knew to not underestimate an agent.

"I don't have the authority to do that," Hunnigan whispered.

"_Bullshit_. No one around here gets as much respect as you do. They'll do anything you say."

Broom ground the gun into her ribs.

"You don't scare me. There's cameras everywhere."

"Oh, I should scare you though, Ingrid. Can I call you Ingrid? Because the only reason this Kennedy mess hasn't ended up on the directors desk is because you've prevented it from doing so. And now, I don't know if you're fucking him or whatever, but I know that you've been protecting an enemy of the state."

"Leon Kennedy is not an _enemy of the state_. He's the best agent we have."

"He's a traitor, Ingrid."

"And you're not?"

"I know where my loyalties lie. Now then, this was just to get your attention..." Broom rubbed the gun against Hunnigan's shirt. "The real threat is the treason case I'm about to file with the director. The one that could get you, Agent Hayes, and pretty boy Kennedy a lifetime behind bars."

"If you want me to kill Kennedy, how does threatening him with a treason case help you?"

"I don't give a shit if Kennedy and his whore live or die. I just want that building gone. Oh, and I was lying, about the gun not being a threat. The audio-visual in this wing has been jammed for the past thirty minutes, before Hayes left the room. Probably so you could continue to assist Kennedy. And after you get shot in the chest with a gun that has Hayes fingerprints on the trigger, it will be up to internal affairs to decide just what happened in here."

Hunnigan took a deep breath. He was bluffing. He had to be bluffing.

Broom pulled the gun from out under the table and held it to her temple.

"I'm not lying to you."

"Who are you working for?"

"I'll tell you all about that, once the building is gone."

* * *

><p>Leon took off in a mad dash down the hallway, while Ada stood with her back to him, firing another well placed shot into the creature's meaty leg. It was beginning to stumble, the right leg dragging across the floor. Ada backed up down the hall, a bead of sweat rolling down her temple.<p>

"Did you find it?" she called to Leon.

"Not yet!" Leon responded.

Ada bit down on her lower lip and studied the monster for a moment. It's bulk, combined with a crippled leg were causing it to move at a dragging pace, but the four arms remained a threat, as it clawed at the air and spit frothy saliva down it's jaw.

"Found it!" Leon yelled.

Ada turned around and bolted down the hallway, finding Leon at one of the last laboratories.

"It's locked."

Ada stared at Leon for a brief second, before pulling out her gun and shooting a hole in the door.

"Kick," she commanded, almost breathless.

Leon slammed his leg against the door, creating a wide fissure in the splintered wood. Ada extended her leg and kicked upwards. Behind them, she heard the beast lumbering closer. She put her hand through the door, and managed to grasp the handle on the other side, twisting it open.

Ada and Leon rushed into the Cryogenics laboratory. It was dark, other than for the soft light let out by various humming machines. To her left were several tanks of liquid nitrogen.

"Perfect," Ada thought aloud.

Leon noticed the tanks too.

"I've done this before," he said with a satisfied grin.

Together, Leon and Ada wrestled a tank down onto the floor, watching it drop in the doorway.

"We're going to need to back up... and draw it in," Leon said.

He and Ada paced backwards into the corner of the room, where they were partially hidden by darkness. Ada smirked at him and raised her fingers to her lips, making a cat call whistle. In the hallway, the roaring started up again.

"He's coming. Or they're coming, I guess," Leon said.

"Hold steady..." Ada whispered, more of a reminder to herself than a command.

The creature burst through the doorway with an audible punch, cracking the frame. It looked down at the tank laying in it's path, giving Leon just enough time to shoot the canister of liquid nitrogen.

The monster groaned, as the canister burst in it's face, leaving the top layer of it's flesh frozen.

"Shoot the rest of them!" Leon yelled, discharging a bullet into the row of gas tanks which framed the room. The explosion which followed knocked both Ada and Leon against the back wall.

"I think it's frozen!" Leon said.

"One way to find out."

Ada discharged the last of her bullets into the monster. The flesh chipped off at her bullets, falling to the floor in chunks.

Leon and Ada both breathed heavy sighs of relief.

"It's dead."

"We need to dispose of the body... none of the genetic material from the virus can ever get into the wrong hands, or..."

Before Ada could finish her sentence, the noise of an announcement blared from outside so loudly, that Ada and Leon could hear it even inside.

**"Building to be destroyed. Evacuate if you want to live. **_**Gebäude werden zerstört. Evakuieren und zu überleben." **_

"Well, that takes care of your problem."

* * *

><p>"You're insane, Agent."<p>

"That's big talk for a lady with a gun pressed to her forehead, don'tcha think?"

Hunnigan kept her breathing steady, trying to not appear panicked. This couldn't really be happening... could it?

"What's in that building that you want gone so badly?"

Broom shrugged one shoulder.

"Trade secret. Now, be a good girl..." he grabbed Hunnigan's right arm with a vice grip and pulled it forward, against the keypad of her computer screen. "...And unlock this computer."

Hunnigan's thumb slammed into the fingerprint reader with such force that it left an impression in the lcd screen of the computer.

"Welcome, Hunnigan, Ingrid," the computer chimed, oblivious to Hunnigan's struggling.

"The computer's authorized, Ingrid. Now I don't even need your voice... I don't even need you..."

Broom grabbed the phone with his free hand, and cradled it between his shoulder and ear, before pressing the _recent calls_ button. Not to be foiled by Hunnigan making noise, he dragged the barrel of the gun from her temple down to her lips.

"Yes, this is the National Security Office, calling in an airstrike on the Humboldt science building... authorization code is: 095835. Thank you, yes. I will tell her you said hello, she's very busy at the moment."

Broom placed the phone down in the cradle and smiled at Hunnigan.

"One of your friends in Germany says, 'Hello.' Very nice he was, didn't even question why you couldn't make it to the phone..."

"Hey, **_Arschgesicht_****! What are you doing?" **

Broom spun around, to see Heidi standing in the doorway, flanked by Agent Hayes and two more agents, glowering down at him.

"You better put your guns down, or I'll shoot her, I swear to God, I will!"

Hunnigan took the opportunity to kick Broom in the crotch, ducking down out of the direct firing range of the gun. In his shock, Broom dropped the gun and screamed. Agent Hayes dove for the pistol and snatched it off the floor.

"It's not even loaded!"

Hunnigan took in a gasp of air before staring at Agent Hayes.

"The air strike has been authorized... I need to get Leon on the phone..."

Hayes nodded. He had Broom on the floor, with his foot planted squarely in the middle of the other man's back. Heidi walked over to Hunnigan's desk, holding Broom's report on Leon.

"Dispose of it," Hunnigan muttered.

"Yes," Heidi agreed, pulling the shredder out from under Hunnigan's desk.

Hunnigan grabbed the phone and dialed Leon's cell phone.

"Leon, it's Hunnigan. They called an air strike on the building... I'm going to try to get it called off, but it may already be on it's way..."

"Don't call it off."

"What?"

"There are things in here... that if they get in to the wrong hands, the damage they could do would be catastrophic. Let them destroy the building."

"But, Leon. There's evidence in there."

"There's no evidence in here. It was Tricell, they cleaned it all up. The only thing in here are virus samples with a massive potential for weaponization."

"It was Tricell?"

"I'll explain later. Keep the air strike on. We'll get out. I promise."

Leon hung up, and Hunnigan stared at the receiver.

"Agent Kennedy said to keep the air strike on."

Hayes looked down at the immobile Agent Broom below his foot.

"Do you trust Kennedy?" Hayes asked.

"Yes," Hunnigan replied, without hesitation. "I trust him."

Heidi, who was sitting in a desk chair and staring into space spoke up.

"Sorry it took me so long to get here... I was about to come in to ask you where Hayes went, and I saw Agent Broom pulling the gun out. When I went to find Hayes to tell him, I saw the file about Leon and took it."

"Thanks, Heidi," Hunnigan replied.

The two other agents assisted Hayes in picking Broom off the floor and carrying him away to a holding cell.

"So, what happens next?" Heidi asked.

"We wait for Leon to call us back."

* * *

><p>Ada and Leon clambered over the monster's fallen body in an effort to make it out of the building. They were too high up to safely jump out a window, and Leon didn't care to break his neck after all the strife he had been through. The pair ran down the hallway and into the emergency staircase, the same way they had come in. Ada decided to expedite the process by jumping off the staircase, landing on the platform of the next floor. Leon shook his head before following suit.<p>

They rushed down the staircase, with the drone of the emergency siren growing louder and louder. From the rooftop, Leon could hear the takeoff of a helicopter, the one which belonged to the "terrorists," or Tricell agents, more accurately. He wondered if any of them were still alive, and if so, what would become of them. They missed the body of the quarrelsome agent that Ada had shot when they jumped from the fourth to the third floor. Leon was thankful for this.

At the base of the staircase, Leon and Ada slammed open the heavy door, and were prepared to take off into the night. A burst of cool air hit them, before flood lights shined in their faces.

_**"Ada Wong, you are under arrest."** _

Ada scoffed.

"So much for a hero's welcome."


	12. The End

The End.

_If you want a happy ending, that depends, of course, on where you stop your story._

****-Orson Welles****

* * *

><p>"It's a simple deal, Miss Wong. You'd be ridiculous to not take it. Tell us everything you know about the Berlin incident, and you walk. There's no booking record for you, no paperwork, nothing. We're in ungoverned airspace right now. We'll drop you off wherever you please. All you have to do is talk."<p>

Ada crossed her legs and gave the agent her best demure smile.

"It's not that I won't talk. It's that you wouldn't believe me."

* * *

><p>"You have to take the deal, Ada. They'll let you go. We can be together... again, just like we were in the forest..." Leon looked out the window of the plane. He didn't want to face her, to see the pitying look he knew she was giving him.<p>

"Don't kid yourself, Leon," she replied, a sigh permeating her words.

"I don't want to let you go."

"And I don't want to hurt you."

She walked up behind him and wrapped her arms around his waist, letting her head rest against his shoulder.

"I love you, Ada."

"I love you too."

* * *

><p>"She took the deal. They're dropping her off in Eastern Europe," one of the CIA agents said to Leon.<p>

"What'd she tell them?"

"Some nonsense about Tricell trying to take over the world with Albert Wesker's money... I can't believe they let her go on that bullshit."

Leon shrugged.

* * *

><p>"We're all very glad that you're back, Agent Kennedy," Hunnigan said.<p>

The room was filled with members of the CIA, agents and clerks who smiled at him without really being glad he was around.

"Due to the circumstances of your last mission, there's been a slight... reassignment in your duties. You're being moved to protective detail. President Benford said he would love to have you on his team..."

* * *

><p>"I'm glad you're feeling better, sis."<p>

Leon sat across from his sister, twiddling his thumbs. He felt awkward.

"All the physical therapy helps."

"I'm sorry about everything..." Leon began.

"Don't you dare apologize... what I did to you was awful...selfish of me. I never really wanted to die, you know? I just wanted a rest for awhile. I wasn't even thinking... how it could look."

"It's okay."

Regina shrugged.

"Tell me then, about this girl? Where'd she go?"

Leon laughed, defeated.

"You know, I don't think she was ever really my girl."

"What do you mean?"

"All this time I spent with her... I never really even knew her."


	13. Epilogue

Epilogue. 

_Love... bears all things, believes all things, hopes all things, endures all things._

_**-**_**1 Corinthians 13:7 **

* * *

><p><strong>Berlin, Germany.<strong>

**May, 2034.**

The cafe hasn't changed much over the years, though it's been so long. The tables are still coated in chipped linoleum, the lights still flicker and fight with themselves to stay lit, and the girl at the counter is cheerful and bright eyed. It's a comfort to Leon, the way this place is seemingly stuck in time. He pages through a beat up copy of The New York Times he bought for too much at a news stand—print media has been on the way out for the past thirty years, yet it's still chugging along. That's a comfort to Leon too, the smear of ink on his fingers, the words that can't be edited in real time, the permanence of it. He flips to the business section to check the asking price on Heidi's company—she's done well for herself, though having a former president's daughter as a best friend couldn't have hurt. He smiles at the memory of meeting Heidi, at this very cafe, before his mind fast forwards to protecting her from a would-be assassin; at least the bullet ridden drywall has been replaced.

Leon takes a drink of his coffee and rubs his eyes. The girl at the counter probably wonders why he's been here so long. He wonders that too.

He's waiting.

"I'm sorry to bother you, but would you happen to be from the States?"

Leon looks up from his paper, to see an Asian woman of about his own age standing above him, staring expectantly at his paper. She's got short black hair with a hint of gray and an elegantly weathered face. Her lips are wine red and pursed.

"Yes, I am," Leon says, hesitant at first.

She sticks her hand out to greet him. Leon shakes.

"My name is Dawn. Nice to meet you. Mind if I sit down? I've been looking for a...kindred spirit, for awhile now."

"Kindred spirit?"

Leon raised an eyebrow. She waved her hand, dismissing the phrase.

"Another American then."

Dawn pulled the other chair out and sat down.

"So, _kindred spirit_, what's your name?"

"Scott. Scott Leonce."

She tapped a finger against the table and gazed out the window.

"That name sounds familiar... did you have anything planned tonight, Scott?"

"Nothing I couldn't clear from my schedule."

"Because, I think I'd like to get to know you."

Leon smiled at her.

"I think I'd like to get to know you too."

**The End.**

* * *

><p><strong>Author's Note: <strong>Writing this story has been an incredible journey, and today I get to check the _complete_ box in my story summary. It's such an amazing feeling, to complete something I've been working at for six months now. Now that it's done, I hope that I did Leon and Ada justice. I wanted them to be happy together, but I knew that could never happen while Leon was still an agent.

This story will be published on my Ao3 account in full, including the _mature_ scenes.

Mega-thanks to my bff, Alias Blackclaw, who introduced me to Resident Evil, Fanfiction, and the wonders of writing smut. **ILY.**

I met some awesome people in the course of writing this story, particularly Riot Siren and Sad Little Tiger, whom are both _amazing_ writers and got my ass in gear when I didn't want to write.

I've cherished every single review I've received on this story. Knowing that people enjoy my writing really makes my day, and inspires me to keep writing more.

So, to wrap it all up, thank you, to everyone reading this right now.

**_tori-tots. _**


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